Category Archives: frustration

jeanette:
i’m “let go” from my job, aka fired. i’m devastated, and after pleading with my boss, he says, “no, please leave.” it’s really scary because i often wonder if “cutting it” with my new gig, and in the dream, i’m not. following the firing and devastation, i’m out late at night with some people, and i am teaching them how to vigorously shake parking meters to get the quarters. i fill my pockets with so many quarters! it’s crazy.

inspiration: i have been working crazy hours and although not SUPER stressed out about work, it has definitely been the “it” thing in my life since the team transition.

vivian:
aaron and i live in some fancy multi-storied house with a white spiral staircase. i think we’re roommates or something. at one point, i’m upstairs and i feel like i’m kind of going crazy. i start seeing all these kid ghosts everywhere, and i’m freaking out. they are relentless — showing up all the time, flying around… they’re so plentiful in number they’re practically overlapping with one another in my vision. i step out of this room where all this crazy shit is happening and go sit on the staircase, hoping it’ll subside there, but it’s like, more vivid than ever. i finally stumble downstairs. i’m looking for aaron’s room and as i’m looking for it, i realize i’ve never been there before, because the house is sooooo huge. there are hella rooms and i have no idea where i’m going. and actually, there are massive numbers of people living there; there are many more people than just aaron and i, but i don’t really know who they are at all. i vaguely think they’re related to him. i’m going in and out of these rooms, catching bits and pieces of their lives, and they see me a little and i them a little, but no words are exchanged. finally, i settle in on sitting in some bedroom. someone i know is there and talking to me. i don’t think i particularly want to talk to him, but i don’t really have a choice, it feels like. finally, aaron pops his head in for a second and i’m like really excited to see him so i can tell him about the ghosts, because i don’t have anyone else around that i can talk to about them (and i guess i don’t want to talk to this guy i’m talking to about them?), but aaron says that he has to go for just a second because his friend is in the hospital and he needs to see them… and i get a flash of what his friend looks like in the hospital, almost as if i’ve already visited him myself. the end.

inspiration: hung out with aaron the previous night and he was definitely running around a lot in and out of rooms, haha.

vivian:
micah cheating on me… or maybe not… because i don’t know if we’re together or if i’m just jealous. i think i’m trying to get back with him and then, although i thought he’s only been with one girl since, he’s been with like six or seven. and this is bothersome, and i think that it is not possible that we can be together because that is too disgusting.

vivian:
lenny and i have broken up obviously and apparently it is now a fairly well-known fact that jeanette and lenny are trying to hook up with one another. disturbing, obviously. we’re at some house, though, and i’m trying to seduce lenny sexually. apparently this is also fairly well-known, and we’re in some room together, him on the bed, me walking around, and jeanette comes in and goes to use the bathroom in this room, and doesn’t say anything else, really, but is just trying to be unobvious in her obvious attempts to see what we were doing.

at some point i freak the fuck out about the idea that they’re trying to get together and like slap the shit out of lenny. lol. quite uncomfortable!!!

later on, we all go to some store. i don’t know what is going on there but i think i have my hands down lenny’s pantalones at some point. and then i have them down my pantalones but it feels like my hands are down his pantalones :0 (aka penis).

we go inside and there’s this busy busy store with lots of trinkets and jeanette has a big bag. she wants to steal this weird little collection of items that are displayed on one sheet of cardboard yet don’t really have anything to do with one another. she starts stuffing stuff in her bag and to my right, i see a camera, but i don’t mention it because i think that the rack right next to me will be blocking the camera.

i am looking at a rack full of little puff stickers thinking of what to get roxanne or someone. on that rack also, there are some rubber bands of the awesome kind that i used to get from taiwan that don’t stick to your hair when you pull them out. sherry and i are marveling over them and we each decide to buy a pack.

then later on we’re all gathered and sitting for some meeting or display put on by the store owners for us. halfway through the meeting, the demonstrator gets a phone call and she picks it up and then hangs up and walks over to jeanette’s bag and pulls out the stolen items. jeanette is obviously freaking out and i am slightly nervous because it turned out i had forgotten to pay for those rubber bands i wanted to buy!

jeanette:
i had a dream that this guy (bob schaeffer *fake name*) hated me. he’s jordana’s bff from college who is now her roommate. and he dates (kind of?) stacy.

anyways. he hasn’t always been my favorite person. in fact, currently, he is still on my “eh” list – but i have grown to like him more and more in the past few months.

in the dream, he was the LEADER of a group of people who were my “friends” that hated me. like, HATED. it was such a horrible feeling. not that i particularly care if they love me. but i guess, just like in real life, i dont need to be LOVED by everyone but it really does feel awful to be hated. intensely, hated. part of the reason they hated me was because they had gotten to my planner, which doubles as a journal (not currently, but has in the past) and read about how i talked shit about them. etc. childish. regardless.

oh ya, and even tho it was so very fake (not a REALITY dream, where all the components are real) but like certain things that i thought (in my dream) really did happen. like when i found out josh HATED ME. i thought to myself, but at the beer pong tournament when he was BBQ’ing for everyone, i was being super nice and gave him more than one hug for making food for everyone. ahhaha. like that. dream, not real. but thought back to real things that DID happen. am i confusing anyone?

weird. and strange and horrible. i woke up thinking something i never thought would cross my mind especially not first thought when waking: “OMG DOES BOB SCHAEFFER HATE ME?”

sounds like some silly cheeseball teen movie. or tv show. or some silly teen’s real life reality.

vivian:
trendi is now a totally different kind of beast. it’s like a big office with more workers, although jenny and i think summer are still there. i’m at the office later in the evening and it is darkly lit. everyone has their own little office with a door. some girl is wearing a purple leopard-printed type top that is really low in the middle. people are complimenting her.

i’m freaking out. i apparently just got the new issue of redefine and the printer completely fucked up. they put in a bunch of ad pages in the very beginning that weren’t supposed to be there (like 8 pages total) and also stapled in a set of pages completely crooked; they were poking out the top of the book. and there was another set of pages that also wasn’t supposed to be in there. freaking out and trying to call them. wake up in a sweat.

vivian:
escaping from zombies. i’m in a house, and some guys who look like cops are coming. there’s one really tall and buff guy, in particular. not really sure how i know what he looks like… think i see a movie-like third-person shot of him outside my house and somehow put together that he is this bad dude who is coming for me. i don’t know who i’m with, but it’s a boy. i crack open a window and kick out the mesh and leave from it. the boy hesitates because he wants to see some new dragonball z game. i shall not tolerate that ridiculousness and tell him he needs to come. he finally concedes.

we run through the streets — but perhaps i am now alone — and now zombies are frothing at the mouth and trying to beckon us (or me) to join them… they have kind of a goo trail from their mouths and the second you touch it, you turn into a zombie.

before i know it, i’m at this house. i guess my parents live there? it’s this really nice house up on top of a GIANT hill. like giant. like a mountain. when i first get there, there are no zombies. soon, my mom sees them approaching down below on our giant garden / lawn. she tells this to my dad and he is less angry about the idea than he is about the idea of zombies trampling his garden. (both of my parents are white.)

inside the main entry way of our house are all kinds of pots… of the gardening variety. they are empty. they are arranged in some fancypants way. soon, zombies appear at our door. i decide to use some of the giant gardening porcelain pots to attack the zombies with. on the walkway in front of our house, there is basically a giant cliff. the stairway up runs along to the right side, but immediately in front of the door is just a space for standing, and behind that is a long ways down to the ground below.

zombies come solo for a while — a lot of girls, i think — and i use the giant pot to push them off the cliff to down below. some fall in a pool. some splatter to their death. they certainly all die. i hear some zombie mentioning that ## of zombies are dead out of ## who have been converted, and the number that was dead was sooooo small compared to the number that had been converted.

the zombies keep coming, some in pairs, and i keep pushing them off. it seems my parents have disappeared. i’m running out of pots, because i would sometimes throw the pots off with the zombies.

but soon comes this guy that doesn’t look like a zombie. it’s extremely surprising. he is this extremely good-looking dirty blonde guy wearing a white shirt and grey jeans. i pretty much forget all about the danger, and my first words to him are something like, “if i can be a zombie with you for eternity, i’ll do it.” i reckon he is amused by this sentiment, and comes in. the zombies have gone away for the evening. he tells me he’s a ‘turner’ and somehow i know exactly what that means — he can turn zombies back into humans.

this is a thought that fascinates me. so he tries it on me. we kiss. he turns when i turn. i guess he has zombie in him, but it’s dormant. the process is slightly painful and i feel a little “green” and like i have boils on my body. it’s a little dizzying. but that’s about it.

my new lover takes the time to try and turn some mega harmless girl zombie who is in the corner of the house, not attacking anyone. he puts his hand on her leg and it is quite obviously painful to transform from a zombie to a human. he turns human as he’s doing this, but it’s difficult for him to heal her because she’s being a pussy and can’t handle the pain. she brushes him off and shakes her head at him. she’s content being a zombie.

more kissing turns me back from a zombie into a human. he doesn’t turn from a human back into a zombie. it also doesn’t really hurt — perhaps because it hurts more the longer you’ve been a zombie and i’d only been one for a very brief time.

we spend the night cuddled up on the couch with two other people there — presumably tinwin and karen — and zombies don’t come in the night for some reason. i am amazingly content.

come morning, zombies stir me awake. so up until now, when i had been attacking zombies at my door with pots, i would open the door to greet them — to surprise them — and push them off the cliff before they ever got to the point of knocking on the door or breaking it. this morning, i see two zombies outside my door and open the door to do what i had done before. (there is like, one large brown porcelain pot left in the house, not including the one i have in my hand.) to my surprise, there are more than two zombies in front of my door. the other ones are being sneaky, and have wrapped themselves around the side of the house, near the stairs. oh shit. they’re forcing their way in, and force me in by pushing the pot.

and then i sees it. zombie lenny. zombie lenny is holding a broken piece of ceramic plate and is threatening me with it in some way. he breaks off another small sliver of the broken plate, making it more dull than it previously was. not sure why.

he kind of corners me back into my room, which happens to be on the same floor, and kisses me. i turn. apparently he has had this all plotted out and has this book with him. after he turns me, he pulls open the book. it’s like, a death book of sorts. before us were two other people — two males — who had died together. perhaps members of his family. now he filled in some empty spots within these red stamps with my name and his name. and then he proceeded to die / pass out…… fully expecting me to do the same right next to him. but as always, lenny passed out with the quickness, and i didn’t even feel close to wanting to die. i guess in this world being a zombie was a sickness, and the longer you were one, the more likely you were to just die.

so while he passes out i grab half of this giant human-sized donut that had been sitting in my room. no idea why. i guess it’s so old part of it had molded black and was flaking off. a thin shell of the glaze type stuff remained and i carried it to the living room, part with donut, but most of it was looking like a piece of snakeskin (flat). not sure what i intended to do with it. make the zombies sick with mold somehow???

when i get back in the living room, i drop the mold donut in shock. karen and tinwin are on the couch, looking like they are asleep. my nameless lover is on the couch next to them, also ‘asleep’. it’s fucked up. they’ve attached some kind of mechanical pump to him that looks like a bunch of koolaid type drink packets strung together. a girl is sitting on his lap, also asleep, and his fluids are being pumped to her for some reason. two “head zombies” are to the right, supervising. i’m not sure what they are doing, but i somehow have the idea that they are going to be using him to sell some kind of soft drink that really rich people can buy to keep themselves from being zombies. i guess zombies need money too…??? i feel completely helpless because i can’t do anything to help him. it’s completely disturbing. i think about touching him to hopefully turn him into a zombie, but am afraid of killing him since machines are attached to him. in retrospect, i think i should have put him out of his misery, but there surely must have been a selfish aspect to that too.

vivian:
i’m sending redefine in to get printed, but i failed to proof it very well. barely at all, i guess. one article, spread over two or three pages, showed up twice in the magazine… once towards the first 1/3, and once towards the back 1/3. another page, which was largely blue-green/teal, was super duper glitched up with a ‘electronics’ type look to it… the circuit-board type images were covering up the text and it wasn’t even readable.

in total, the printing cost me like $4,000 or something. i got it back and was reading it in a largely grey-brownish room (light-colored). i was obviously disappointed and freaking out. so i tried to contact the print shop, run by an old white-haired man and his wife, asking them if they can reprint the magazine. they told me that reprinting would cost $1.2k or so, because the “metal plates” which had the magazine’s ‘pattern’ on them had already been made with the last printing, and therefore, the cost of making that would be subtracted. which is funny, because that metal plate pattern was obviously wrong, and i never really corrected the errors… nor was it addressed how much the metal plates would cost for the corrected pages. :0

vivian:
i’m at this old building in kirkland. mf magazine is having a fashion party, and i’m going to be an interim person who is throwing it. i’m calling and texting everyone i know to tell them to come. aeryn is there. i’m walking downstairs and about to text jennie, and i run into chol, who is going to be going to spokane that evening. as a result, i don’t ask him to come. jennie calls as i’m talking to chol, and the ringtone that comes on when she calls is some cheesy techno song. i don’t ever ask her to come to my party, because she’s calling to warn me that the secret service is coming to get me because i had been at this shady place in california when some murder went down or something (this was in my dream memory, not my real memory).

the secret service agents pull up in this big white van, and i walk away while still on the phone. i call aeryn and tell him that secret service is coming, and that he is basically in charge, even though someone else more appropriate (i forget who it is) is there. that’s okay, though,. aeryn is trying to find a number for a pizza place because since i’m not going to be there, there’s some problems with catering?!!! and so he’s trying to find an alternative.

i say that i’ll try to talk myself out of the secret service thing.

i go downstairs and they are putting random people into their car, only now their car isn’t a van — it’s one of these like, big passenger trolley things, where the back half doesn’t have a roof or cover… hard to explain, but it’s something you’d like, more likely find at an amusement park.

i explain to the secret service that i run a magazine and am throwing an event this evening, and that if i’m not present, i’ll lose hella money. one hispanic secret service agent in particular says, okay, we get you next time. i call aeryn and tell him it’s okay. i go upstairs. i don’t know what time it is, but by now more people have shown up. eva is there, but she soon disappesrs. liz, ray, nate davis, and randoms galore… it’s a three part room (see drawing below). lenny is running around who knows where. i’m texting liz and listing who is at the party already, and i list “liz” in my text message; i’m texting liz about herself. and i look to my right and liz is sitting right there in the room, and to the right of liz is ANOTHER liz. i’m confused and don’t stick around to investigate.

some caterer shows up and suddenly it shifts to a third person view of myself. i’m a white lady. i talk to someone about the mf magazine fashion show that’s supposed to happen, and i’m told that it’s not going to happen because mf has already had their fashion show. my third-person view gets mad, saying that it was shady that mf would sell me a contract to throw their fashion show when they knew that they had an event already. it put me in a pickle.

i run downstairs, and now it’s first person view again. two old men are wearing guard uniforms and standing in front of a table. their uniforms are like a hybrid of english and scottish guard uniforms. i say, “whoa! this is a crown hotel?” and they say yes.

i go upstairs and there’s music playing, and everyone starts to dance. a lot more people have shown up… i’m now unconcerned with whether more people show up. i start dancing with this random bald guy. he’s skinny, and kinda thuggish, and wearing a wifebeater. but the dance with him is amazing, almost as if it were choreographed. he’s leading the whole time and i’m just following. i’ve never met him before, but i’m just following his movements and everything is going extremely smoothly, except for the occasional step i need to take back from him because i’m in way too close. he comments on how i have good balance cause i’m doing all these complicated turns and junk. the comment makes me more confident and i keep dancing, but ad-lib moves, which include quick inward movements that involve my face being right up next to his… it’s pretty intimate.

before i know it, a circle has gathered around us and all these people are watching him and i dance. the whole time, i’m ultra smitten by him. the dance is like magical, like the one between patrick dempsey and the girl at the end of the movie “enchanted” — but way more complicated, skilled, contemporary, and awesome.

tammy:
i was running in a marathon with a few of my friends, and we stopped for a bathroom break, and my friend goes, “are you on your period?” and i said, “no, not for a couple of days.” but when i went to the bathroom, i had my period. some story happened in the bathroom, but i can’t remember – something about rachel bilson being in it. for some odd reason, the next scene i remember is in chinatown, at a dim sum restaurant. we were getting ready to order while we waited for people. but now my family is there. so are my girl friends. i am sitting there and i realize it is this girl named ann’s birthday. i look outside and see a flower vendor. so i start looking for cash in my backpack to buy her a flower. i can’t find any. i ask my mom for some. she didn’t have any either, i guess.

oh yeah, and my cousin is talking to my mom about getting a discount at a retail store my mom worked at, i guess.

this guy named biagio that i know says he has some, but it might be in his beret in his car. i’m finally reaching into my bag and i don’t find cash, but i find one of my uncashed paychecks for $1k or something, but it was dated for 2001. i get pissed at myself because i had never noticed it was missing. i ask my mom where there is an atm, and she says downtown. i put the check in my shirt so i don’t forget. the end. i wake up reaching for where i think my check is.