this had all happened before. i was able to skip some parts. and i knew the deal so it wasn't so scary.

someone, a friend of the family, who to all appearances was a middle aged woman, had done something a while back. stole some treasure. left town.

but we found it. 5 or 6 of us. we didn't know it was the treasure she had found, we just knew it was amazing, worth so much money - each gold coin was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we each took 6 or 7 plus a handful of smaller coins.

but it started to happen soon. i looked out into the backyard and saw my dad working on something, but there was a blurry shape in the bushes behind him. at first it looked like a lumpy grey dog-creature, but i couldn't quite focus my eyes on it. once i took a closer look it moved strangely,a shadow-shape jumping out from it's head and moving alternately, like some cheesy sci-fi effects from an early 90s movie. but it wasn't a movie.

this had all happened before. i knew what it meant. i called frantically to my dad and told him to come inside. i wanted to explain the danger he was in without drawing his attention to it - because that was the scary part.

i knew that this thing, whatever it was, was very dangerous. i also knew that the more you looked at it, the more you thought about it, the more dangerous it would become. imagine trying not to think of the thing that was in the corner of your eye, the thing that would grow to immense power and size and rip you to pieces if you thought about it too much.

so i knew what we had to do. we had to track down the woman and give her the treasure back. i also knew she wasn't really middle aged. she was old. older than anyone could guess. and she didn't want to be found.

i knew she was somewhere in the states, and i knew she was staying in a swanky retirement home type living situation. luckily this had all happened before so i found the list of research i had done. we knew which travel destinations were her favorites. and we found her.

as she was traveling up, we tried to deal with our problem. you had to relinquish the desire for this treasure. it was difficult. even without the money, these coins were beautiful, they were silvery, they were soft in your hand. but i would rather give them up than be eaten.

and the danger was very great now. the monster was absorbing all of our fear, it had nearly the full attention of some of us, and all we could do was keep it locked out, windows shored up. my dad had to go and close the door. he walked backward, trying not to look at the thing, give it any more power. but by this time it was as huge as a lion. all of our hearts stopped.

one of our party couldn't give up the coins. he told us he would take our portion of the treasure if we didn't want it. and we gave him our little piles of coins, one by one. i didn't want to think about what would happen to him.

dad picked these leaves, they looked like large clovers. they made you weightless when you held onto them. he said he got them at 3333 colonial street - that was where the band rancid lived, coincidentally. we went down to the other end of the pier, and we were sitting in this black computer chair and we'd float up into the air. it was amazing. so exciting and fun.

adam floated up and i was waiting and waiting for him to come down. while he was floating, i was thinking about how to get some more of these leaves, obviously. i was sure rancid would be guarding them. i thought about maybe sneaking over there at night.

anyway, adam still wasn't coming down. i saw something in the sky and it turned out to be the back of the chair, gently floating down. it looked a little weird, but i wasn't worried that adam had an accident or anything. i knew he'd be ok.

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there was a kennel full of owls. they were all squished together and it was quite sad. there was one i could take out and pet and snuggle and he seemed so sad but he liked to cuddle with me. another owl tried to escape every time i opened the door. i wanted to just let them out.

then there was someone on a bike, riding down a cement chute, really high up in the air. there was cement in the chute so it was slowing them down. they got to the end and jumped off. they may have been escaping. when we looked back up, we saw a scary sight - a baby was hanging down from the end of the chute.

we rushed over to the bar to get a giant sweater so we could catch the baby when it fell. there was a cheerful and charismatic bartender. he was like a character from a movie.

anyway, we went back to save the baby but the baby was already safe, someone else had got her down. everyone was sitting in a room and the baby was just chilling cheerfully on the couch with a bunch of strangers. she was probably 2, but she was really good at talking. i gave her some cereal in a little baggy. it was corn flakes but it just looked like lumps of powder. my dad was playing guitar with his friend donnie. donnie died a while back, so i was telling everyone it was good he could come back for a bit because my dad missed him.

then we were playing cribbage. michael scott was there but he looked like dwight shrute. the rules of the game were way more complicated than in real life. there were these weird pieces you had to move, some were paper clips and some were little statues of yourself. michael / dwight didn't understand how to play and kept thinking he could take the little statue, but he didn't have the right cards. we were exasperated.

i was looking into a hole in the ground. there were tiny little birds in it. like the size of a bee, but it looked like a tiny sparrow. except it was blue - gorgeous, brilliant, bright royal blue. there were many of them, some so small they looked like ladybugs. it was so amazing. i didn't want to squish any of them by accident.

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the two of them were in my room. it was a living room with big glass sliding doors. she was sitting on the couch and he was standing in the door way. they were talking nonchalantly about how they were going to get some mescaline and do a whole bunch of it. in my mind it was the worst drug you could do. i knew that even though things weren't good between us, i didn't want her starting down that path. i still cared about her.
i tried to explain, to show her how worried i was, but she was offended that i'd tell her what to do. he was annoyed as well. i couldn't believe he was encouraging this. he made me feel so small. i got frantic and i could feel i was making a fool of myself. they were looking at me like i was crazy.

i came home to discover my cat had 11 more kittens. i didn't know what to do with 15 cats!

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i was in my apartment but it was different.
things felt weird. i thought i should go to sleep. i was awakened by two little kids coming into my apartment. they woke me up and asked if they could see the kittens. i figured i should let them.

when they started playing with the kittens i noticed there were 4 kittens! one was dark brown and reddish in colour. i knew this was not right, but at first i couldn't figure out why or how another kitten, exactly the same size could get in my apartment.

suddenly i realized someone had been subtly moving things and changing things in my apartment so i would not know what was real anymore, just like they do in movies.

when i figured this out, shawn from work came into my apartment and told me it was him who had been messing with my mind. he was very evil and menacing. he had these little squares of cardboard and he said i would start seeing them in places where i didn't expect. i was terrified. why did he want to do this to me? what was his purpose?

i ran away. i was wondering where i should go. i imagined if i went to my parents' house there would be little cardboard squares everywhere and i was afraid for their safety. i tried to think of something else i could do but i couldn't think of anywhere i could go that he wouldn't predict.

i ended up going to the post office. while i was wondering if i could get the post office lady to believe my weird and crazy story i saw my old music teacher, miss L, pulling out of the driveway. she didn't hear me yell so i had to hit her car with a handful of small things. she stopped and i got in her car and started explaining what had happened. as i was telling her the story i realized it sounded really far fetched.

as she pulled into her driveway i was wondering if she would believe me, and i was terrified to check and see if there were cardboard squares on her front step.

i was in toronto hanging out with a group of people, one of which was keith H. they had built this amazing tower out of something, it was all wobbly looking and terribly unsteady, this narrow tube of a building that went up ten stories or something in an alley between two other tall buildings. it was all different colors.

keith was going to go up to the top, it opened into a platform like a turret from a castle, or like the round part of the CN tower. so he left to go to the top, i was astonished that there was an elevator which went up the side of the tower.

while he was traveling, the others told me the tower was made of american apparel clothing, laminated and folded into these blocks, like hollow cubes with 4 points on the top like a crown almost. they were really lightweight.

we watched him get out of the elevator and stand at the top of the tower. the tower started swaying and then a big gust of wind hit it and we saw it lean over toward one of the buildings. keith was hanging on to the railing, it was moving so fast. the tower hit the building and the top platform toppled over toward the building's roof. keith jumped off onto the roof, very nonchalant, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

the roof was really pretty, with a garden and hanging viney things all over the place with little lights in them.