What a Day

So, today was pretty awesome, for several reasons. First of all, on the way to my dad's house from school, I ran into my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. McNatt, and she remembered who I was. I was walking with my iPod on, down Hawthorne Road, and I looked behind me and caught sight of a jogger on the opposite side of the street. After a few seconds, I decided to start singing ("My Girls" by Animal Collective). Then I was shocked and embarrassed when the jogger pulled up along side of me and spoke.
After I realized that it was Mrs. McNatt, she gave me a hug and asked me how I was. I told her that I really liked high school and that I had picked up my grades since elementary school. Then she asked me about my writing, and I had the chance to tell her that it was because of her instruction that I started to write poetry in the first place; we read this book in her class, called Out of the Dust, which was sort of like a Grapes of Wrath for a younger audience. The other thing that set it apart from Steinback was that it was written completely in verse. While we were reading this book, we were given an assignment to write a poem about something that makes us dance (I chose to write about when my relatives visit). From then on, I continued to write and love poetry.
After that, she asked me if I was still friends with Elizabeth and Sofia; I told her that we had grown apart in middle school, but that I was still close friends with Shannon. She asked me what I wanted to do when I left school, and I mentioned my aspiration to do something medical, whether it be something to do with surgery or psychology. She advised me to go to Carolina, where she said that two of her kids had graduated since I had been in fifth grade. Soon, we were at the place where I had to cross Hawthorne, and so I ended the conversation with a joke that my dad and I have had since my days of being constantly late in elementary school: "The good thing about living so close is that I can walk, and not be late to class." Then she laughed and jogged on.
Yesterday was pretty great as well. Saoirshe walked home with me after school and hung out until about 6:30. We worked on our Moravian Star math project (she got her base finished and I created one stellation). I had been in a pretty black mood all day (it might have been the weather; the sky was gloomy and it was wet and dull outside), but it was nice to be able to converse with a friend outside of the school setting. My dad made a slow-cooked pork roast for dinner, which actually came out pretty awesome. He told me to eat quickly, because Mark had invited us to go to the Wake Forest game that night. They were playing High Point University.
We arrived in the middle of halftime. By the end of the game, we had gained thirty more points and we beat High Point at about 79-56 or something like that. The best part of the game was the High Point team's coach. He was very expressive with his hands; it seemed that after every play, whether High Point scored or Wake scored or a foul was made, he clapped his hands furiously in his team's direction. Sometimes he simply gestured aggressively in the air, but he mostly clapped. I told my dad at the end of the game that High Point probably didn't win because he wasn't clapping loud enough.
I've been having weird dreams this week. I had none that I can remember last night, but the night before, I had a memorable one: I was traveling with a group of my friends to meet my parental in-laws for the first time (I was the same age in the dream, but somehow I was married). My husband was among the group that I traveled with, and we flew over (to where his parents lived) on an airplane. The part of the dream that I remember most was entering and walking around my parental in-laws' house. It was big and spacious and, like my grandparents' apartment in Atlanta, decorated mainly in reds and browns. There was a glossy piano in the middle of the floor of the living room, and a den-type room that reminded me of my grandmother's family room in Florida. Every now and then, the dream would fade out into another, in which I was myself in a movie theater beside the person who was my husband in the other dream; we were not married in this second dream. It was awkward, because it was one of those first-date-esque scenarios where you're not sure if you should hold the other person's hand. Eventually, when I leaned over to say some cheesy line like, "My hand is cold," he turned his face and kissed me. I was stunned, and then the dream changed back into the parental in-law dream. Now, my group traveled outside to an open area near the house where several small booths were set up around the perimeter of some picnic tables. My husband informed me that his parents owned a very successful outdoor restaurant; as he said this, flocks of people from all over gathered at the booths, grabbed plates of food, and settled at the various tables on the grass. As we walked to a booth to get a plate of spaghetti, I woke up.
If that dream was weird, then the one before it was even weirder. In this dream, my dad and I lived back in the old house on Cavalier Drive, though I still went to Reynolds High School. It was about 5:00 at night and I had to get to the school for a late marching band rehearsal. My dad said that he couldn't leave the house because he had things to do. "Take the car," he said, throwing the keys at me.
At first, I was sort of pleased. I was not the proper age in the dream to be driving, but I was still sort of excited (part of me seemed to realize that I was asleep, and that I would probably drive with great ease as a result). My excitement changed into terror as I climbed into the car, backed out of the drive, and started to travel up the hill. It seemed that there were five or six pedals on the floor, and my foot seemed to be stuck on the accelerator, because the car kept gaining speed. I wrenched my foot from the floor and searched for the brake as the car nearly flew over the crest of the hill, banging into a curb as it zoomed down the street. I could not find the brake; then I looked down and noticed that I had somehow gotten into fifth gear. I tried to change this as I took a right turn to avoid crashing into a truck. I was yanking at the stick-shift as the car flew across Country Club Road, narrowly sliding between two cars going in opposite directions. Then, with a heart-stopping crash, the car slammed into another car that was sitting in the parking lot of the gas station beside my mother's house. As I felt the airbags hit my chest with explosive force, I strained my eyes to see into the other car. I saw movement, and the faint outline of a baby's car-seat in the backseat of the car. I woke up then.
Anyway, I had dreamless sleep last night and woke up feeling rested today.