dr. doooom's answering machine

my wife and i like to talk about our dreams. not our dreams like we want to live in an igloo on the snowy banks of juno (we like talking about those dreams too) but our dreams that we have at night. both of us are avid dreamers, meaning we usually have some good stories to share in the am over the honey nut corn flakes and devil's juice (coffee).

so this morning i was ready to lay one on her, i had had a trippy damn dream and she was gonna get a real kick out of it. turns out she had had one too, so i said, tell me yours first.

turns out she had a scary dream. it went something like this.

a little background info. ever since september 11, my wife has had a mild phobia of overly tall buildings. she doesn't want to live on the penthouse of the trump tower or anything like that. she prefers to be fairly close to the ground, preferably with a soft hedge in jumping distance for a quick escape.

we've been looking on and off for a new place to live, so she has this dream that we're at this really tall luxury condo building, and this lady is showing us various units that are for rent. we look at some on the fifth floor. too small. the 23rd floor. a little roomier and kind of nice, but still too small. so then she takes us up to the 75th floor, and opens the doors to a beautiful apartment. large with floor-to-ceiling windows all around, a breathtaking view of honolulu and the pacific, and furnished in vintage stained bamboo couches and plush chairs and the whole nine yards. basically my wife's dream house.

then she notices that there's an old lady sitting out on the lanai. a younger man is sitting with her. "who's that" she asks the realtor lady. "oh that's the lady that used to live here. she's dead. that's her son." so anyway, this freakshow son comes in and starts talking about how he's gonna bring his mom back to life. we're like, ok psycho joe, and we go look at the bathroom. there's a dead body in the bathroom. the weird guy is like, "oh i'm gonna use her body and put my mom's head on there"

that's when my wife notices that i have suddenly disappeared and the weird guy's head is on my body. so she's freaking out. she runs into the front room, and i'm out there with my head on the weird guy's body, we like switched heads, she can see the stitches in my neck and everything. and no, i don't think my wife has every seen reanimator. anyway, i'm like "oh honey, i know this place is kind of freaky, but i think we should take it," and she's like hell no.

then the dead mom shows up with her head on the realtor lady's body. only that head isn't working right, as it's already dead. i guess there's certain science to attaching and reattaching heads. anyway, this sends my wife running from the place.

then she finds a large church and thinks she'll go inside and pray and be safe. but then someone comes running saying "watch out the church is gonna explode!!" and sure enough the windows of the church shatter and blow up like a neutron bomb went off in there. so my wife's place of sanctuary from the head-switching gang is out the window.

mercifully, she woke up soon after that.

so i sat there, making the cross in front of myself, muttering a hail-mary, and realized it was my turn to tell my dream.

which was not much compared to that.

i dreamed that i was late to work and my wife had pulled the car into the driveway. i grabbed our little jack russel terrier (which we don't have) and jumped in the back seat. i had to hold on to the dog to make sure he didn't jump out the window. all of a sudden, my wife is gone, and the dog's driving the car. i offer to drive, but the dog says "no problem man, i got it." and that was it. that dog was funny looking, standing on its hind legs on the seat, steering with its front legs. he was all smiles though, and was steering through traffic like a champ.

the only other thing of note is that the dog turned into a white horse about halfway to my office. the horse was a pretty good driver too. in fact, both animals somehow drove from the passenger seat.

so my dream was pretty weak, but i'm glad i went second, because it's nice to have lingering thoughts of a driving dog rather than a head-swapping cult.