Willa's Journal: November 2001

I don't think I've mentioned that Dave got a new dog. He still has Diehard, but now he's also adopted an Australian Shepherd named Simon. Simon had a bad experience with some children and bit one of them, and he was going to be put down; he was rescued, though, and after a few weeks with a foster home, Dave took him home on Sunday.

We met him for the first time on Monday. He's a great dog: he's got the most gorgeous fluffy white/brown/black coat--Cello says he looks tie-dyed. He has big brown eyes that follow Dave everywhere he goes, and if Dave gets out of his line of sight, then he follows him.

On Sunday night I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down a dream. I dreamt that two dogs came up to me and one of them asked if I could drive them to Vancouver. I had a convertible, and the dogs jumped in the back seat; I rolled up the windows so they couldn't jump out. I asked the dog if he knew how to get to Vancouver; he said (I say "said," but I don't think the dog actually spoke, although I certainly understood what he was asking) that he didn't, and I said well, I guessed we'd just have to get in the car and start driving north and see what happens.

The dog was a stocky, sturdy, fluffy dog; at the time I thought he reminded me of Julia's dog, Abby, a golden retriever.

Tonight Dave was getting ready to go home, and he was playing with Simon and ruffling his ears and talking to him, and he was talking about his history and where he had lived, and he said, "You know, SImon was born in Vancouver."

I said, "Oh, my gosh! You're kidding!" and told him about the dream, and I was thinking, well, that's not so unusual, I guess, Simon must have been thinking about Vancouver and I picked up on it (okay, I guess that would be unusual, but then, like the Wynona Ryder character in Beetlejuice, "I, myself, am strange and unusual"). Then tonight when I looked up my dream notes, I realized that I had had the dream before I had even met Simon.

I know it's silly, but I think it's very cool. Like early this week, I had made plans to meet Michelle for lunch. We used to work together, and Julia and I try to get together with her occasionally. Julia wanted to go to P. F. Chang's, an upscale Chinese restaurant on the Plaza, so I wrote and asked Michelle if that suited her, and she said it was fine. We set the day, but I said I'd have to get back with her on a time because Julia had a couple of meetings that day.

But then I forgot about it, and that night I dreamed that I completely forgot to call her at all. I kept telling myself (in the dream) that she knew it was lunch, she'd be there around noon, probably, but I was worried that she'd think we didn't want her to come. Then (in the dream) when we got to the restaurant, it wasn't at all as I remembered it, it was kind of dirty and crowded, in the basement of a building, and we had to go in through the kitchen.

On Wednesday morning I emailed Michelle to tell her what time to meet us, but she didn't write back, and I didn't know if she'd gotten the email or not. She called mid-morning to say that her hard drive had died and she couldn't get email, so she didn't know what time to meet us . . .

And when we got to the restaurant, the only place to park was a parking garage behind the restaurant, and we walked through the alley and almost went in the back door, through the kitchen, until we figured out that we could walk through a nearby store and exit on the sidewalk at the front.

I was telling Bob all this, and he said, well, that's all very interesting, but why can't you dream something that's actually useful, like lottery numbers or stock picks or something?