i was hanging out somewhere outside with my friends.

matt n showed up out of nowhere. man, i haven't seen that guy in ages! so i said "hey matt! how are you?" and he gave me a big hug. unfortunately he had a steak knife in his hand and forgot about it.

so the steak knife poked into my eyelid at the top. it didn't hurt very much, just a nick on the skin of my eyelid. but it started to bleed and those around me kinda started to freak out.

i said it didn't hurt my eye but they thought it might have and didn't want to take any risks. so they called an ambulance. i asked them not to but they said you couldn't take chances when it came to your eyes. they were so serious i began to worry that maybe the nick did go all the way through my eyelid and hit my eye.

so i was bleeding and crying waiting for the ambulance. it finally showed up and they took about 2 seconds to look at my eye, reassured me that nothing was wrong and left. but not before they informed me that i'd have to pay them $250 for the ambulance.

we realized we'd have to walk the rest of the way. we were right on the other side of the bridge.

brenna's house was quite far, but i thought we could do it. i am not afraid of heights.

but as soon as we got on the bridge, i was terrified. i didn't think i could make it. it was so dark out, i could barely see the water below, but my legs were like jello. we weren't even out on the high part yet. i was almost too afraid to move to even go back to the beginning. i knew we had to get over somehow, but i couldn't figure out how we were going to make it.

i asked ashton kutcher on twitter what the best sushi restaurant in toronto was. and he answered (and was right).

(i don't even follow ashton kutcher)

dog dreams:

i was at the grocery store with my dog jake, and my mom. i'd be holding jake in my arms, and then i'd get distracted by talking to someone or looking at something and jake would be gone. i'd be looking for him all around the store, but when i found him he'd just be snuffling at a bag of dog food or something, and i'd say "come over here!" and he would hop back up in my arms.

i remember different things i was looking at, scented candles and things made of bamboo.

next, the grocery store had turned into a hardware store. mom and i went into a room for buying wood. there were really long pieces of wood, but we needed a big square of wood because mom wanted to make a new table. jake was draped over my neck like a boa or a lamb or something. i felt happy and content.

-----------------------------------------------------

first, there were a bunch of us and we were on our way back to work. throughout sydney, there were these little wooded areas with small rivers running through them. kind of secluded even though they were right in town.

we kept stopping at each one for a quick swim, it was so nice and the water felt soft, if that makes any sense. like not shockingly cold or anything, just comfortable and nice. there was green grass and leaves all around and dappled sunlight.

then a teenage girl was harassing me and my sister. just calling nicole over and over, wanting her to go and do something fun with her, meet her places. i kept telling nicole to ignore her, but nicole kept answering the phone. then i got a phone call with a weird number like 1-1-456-9898 and i thought it was the girl calling from skype or something and i screamed into the phone "LEAVE ME ALONE YOU ARE A BITCH".

my dad called me back a few minutes later, and told me the call was from a girl at his work who was calling to offer me a job. i felt bad for yelling at her.

i was at home and the dog walkers came back with the dogs. as they came in i realized that they brought back the wrong dogs - these ones were huge mutty dogs and they were smelly and dirty.
i told them they weren't my dogs, that they had made a mistake, but the dog walkers said it wasn't their fault. they started acting very shifty, and edged out of the door and started walking away quickly.

i realized that someone had stolen my dogs! i was incredibly upset, i didn't know what to do. my body tensed up and i wanted to cry and cry. i felt helpless. someone started telling a story about a church that used to do all sorts of terrible things in the 1800s - they would steal dogs and also torture people in a chamber below the ground. i had a vision of a concrete churchyard with a triangular shaped hole in the ground with someone chained in a dungeon below the hole.

i was mad that someone would even bring up this story as it had nothing to do with my dogs and i still didn't know what to do. i realized i should call the cops.

i dreamed i was talking to him. i think we were walking.
he told me that they had broken up. it was because we had kissed. and he told her. i don't know when the kiss was, i thought we hadn't seen each other in a while.
he was sad that they broke up. he told me that he had to work through his feelings.
but i knew that eventually we would be together. that's what this meant.
a surge of giddiness welled up inside me. peace and impatience somehow coincided.
he showed me on a map the place he wanted to go. i think it was in south america. venezuela. some wooden huts along a muddy road. but kind of like a resort. i decided to look it up and make it happen. i'd take him on the trip.
he came to visit. i wanted to tell him about the trip, i showed him the place on the map and the different places we could stay. he wasn't super interested in the trip, though, i think he just wanted to make sure we were ok. he was wearing a navy hoodie.
we were walking along the water. he hugged me close, held me for a long moment. i could feel his breath on my neck. it was so close and so comfortable. i was so happy i felt like crying. it was the promise of what was to come. it was the way it was supposed to be.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i was in a room with a bunch of people. they were a large french family. i was away from home, dependent on this family to take me in and feed me. at first everything was good. i was introduced to a dark-haired woman. she said "oh, we've met already" with a fake smile. i could see some meanness behind her eyes. but she was being polite enough for the moment. as time went on some of the family members became annoyed with me. everything i said seemed to piss someone off. a few people, most noticeably an old guy, seemed to still be nice. he was the patriarch of the family. he caught my eye as if to tell me not to worry. but i was worried.
eventually, the dark-haired woman just came out and told me to leave. she said "you even forgot who i was after we had been introduced". i looked at the old guy, certain that he'd tell me to ignore her, but he motioned that there was nothing he could do and that i did in fact have to leave. i was trying to get my shoes on, but i wasn't going fast enough. some of them were getting nasty, jeering at me, cursing at me, yelling at me to leave. tears started streaming down my face, i tried to stick up for myself, but i couldn't make any coherent sentences to defend myself.
when i woke up i actually did have tears streaming down my face.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i went to a restaurant. my cousin's wife, karen, was the server. it was such a nice surprise to see her there. i paid for my meal and went into the outer foyer type area.
all of a sudden, karen was there again. she said "oh hey, i noticed you didn't leave me a tip". i said i didn't think i had to leave her a tip because she was my cousin. and also i felt it would be weird to give my cousin money like that. i thought she'd find it weird too. also since i was broke i figured she'd be kind enough not to expect a tip from me. i know i wouldn't if i was in her shoes.
but she said that i should leave her an extra tip because we were related, and that i was being extremely rude. she was making a huge scene in front of my friends. i thought it would be even weirder to just take money out of my pocket to give her, almost lthe same feeling i'd get if she came to my house and demanded i give her 10 bucks. i felt more awkward than i ever did before.

while i was asleep
i went to sleep
and in my second dream
something funny happened
and woke me up laughing
it was so funny i kicked the walls, roaring
but it was only dream-waking.

harry and i went to australia to see the living end. i was very surprised that he agreed to come with me.

there was a whole journey we had to take once we got there, we flew into one place and were going to get the train to wherever the concert was, then go somewhere else to fly back.

we got to the train station and harry was waiting in the car down one end and i was going to go get the train tickets. the train showed up before i could figure out the train schedule (i had no idea where we were or where we were going). i had a moment when i thought harry was going to get on the train without me, but luckily he didn't.

then i thought we forgot the tickets. i was ready to call my mom and get her to somehow ship them to australia, but then i remembered i had placed them inside a book. i also had a guitar with me and a couple of large tins of cookies.

so off we went. i google earth'd the venue, and even though it was in a small city i'd never heard of, it looked like a huge venue.

when we arrived in the city we made our way to the house of the people we were staying with. they were a large family. they were delighted that we were musicians, and they all loved our accents. they kept asking us how to say certain phrases and laughing at the canadian version.

craig and i decided to drive to PEI to get some sushi. we missed the ferry so we had to go around to the bridge.

when we got there, we realized there was no sushi in pei so we went up on a roof with my parents to look at the greenhouses. we all spent some time arranging flowers into pretty shapes, and my sister and i ended the day by eating some chicken nuggets and french fries.

ben kweller and ben folds were playing in the wpm gym. it was awesome. BK started playing and he announced that my band with harry was going to close the show. what a great surprise!

and then he welcomed his guest drummer to the stage... it was harry! every time i tried to take a picture of bk harry would make a funny face in the background. it was hilarious.

then ben folds started setting up, and i went and bought t-shirts at the merch table. gillian was working merch but i wasn't allowed to hang out behind the merch table because there were huge security guards.

my dad asked me who one of the posters on halifax locals was (fred44 actually). i was so surprised that he was reading locals.

also, it took me a minute to realize this didn't actually happen.

i met a girl named "Laserer".

apparently she got that nickname because she was constantly having laser treatments to remove a tattoo on the back of her hand. she had so many laser treatments that part of her hand around the tattoo had become transparent. but there were still traces of the tattoo left, you could see it from both sides of her hand because of the transparency. i think the original tattoo had something to do with a door. all that was left were a few geometric shapes in dots.

the kid was playing the guitar on the sidewalk near holy redeemer. he was a cross between b.h. bobby and a kid who comes in my store, joey's brother. he was playing my song, all of my friends, but he was doing it awesome. i never knew he was that good at music.

he was wearing a hat, it looked very small, but then halfway through the song, amid the crowd of people circling around him, i saw the hat start to fall off his head. but it kept falling and falling, it was like a giant cat in the hat hat, made of some thin flimsy material, and it kept uncoiling. he was trying to brush it away with one hand and keep playing, but he had to stop to take the hat off.

i was upset that he was interrupted. i started clapping on this weird syncopated beat, so that he wouldn't get discouraged and stop. he re-started the song, anyway, but i ended up having to stop clapping because the beat was too weird and i kept losing my place.