Early this morning, in bed, I felt a series of small, quick taps moving down my right arm. I reached over with my left to investigate, and my hand gently closed around a tiny, warm, slightly agitated section of blanket. Something was inside, something with a heartbeat.

I leaned over to Lauren and woke her up, pulling her hand over to feel what I had found.

She agreed. A mouse. Which surprised us. The cat shouldn't have let mice into our bed.

We fell asleep.

And then we woke up, in an apartment both catless and mouseless. As far as we know, anyway.

I had a dream last night in which singing a particular song underwater in a particular muddy lake would give me a particularly exciting reward. I didn't know what the reward might be, but I sang. And I suddenly found myself face to face with my smiling granny. I hadn't talked to her in a long time.

And I don't remember what song I sang. Pretty sure it wasn't this one. Though I might give it a try if I ever find that lake again.

Damn These Vampires will be track 1 on All Eternals Deck.

I had an incredibly persistent dream last night in which the band Miniature Tigers needed me to sub in on drums.

In the first stage of the dream, someone mentioned that there was a Tigers concert that night and that I probably ought to get ready to help out. Surprised, I woke up and drank some water.

In the second stage of the dream, I reminded the Tigers that I don't play the drums and asked if we could at least rehearse a little before the show. Terrified, I woke up and hung out with my poor sick kitten for a while.

In the third stage of the dream, someone spotted me in the audience, called me backstage, sat me down at the drumkit, and told me to keep it simple. I woke up for good before the music started, simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

Cannibal Queen is track 1 on Tell It To The Volcano.

And my favorite thing about Miniature Tigers is that their name very naturally suggests an alternative name: The Kittens.

The Carrot Project has me too excited to sleep much at night, and I'm starting to feel that ominous scratchy in the back of my throat, so I decided I needed a nap.

As I was settling into the couch, I remembered a Facebook status message from a couple of weeks ago:

Martha Blake is taking a loud music nap.

I took those at boarding school all the time. In CT's reclining dentist chair.

Bob Dylan Desire.
Beck Odelay.
The Temptations.
Let It Be.
Rusted Root.
Phish Billy Breathes.
Tupac.

Damn. Those were some great naps.

But I decided for low volume today, and, in honor of Martha, I fell asleep to Langhorne Slim.

Then I dreamt like crazy, stirred after every little episode, told myself to remember, forgot everything, and woke up 30 minutes later to Lauryn Hill philosophy.

Interlude 3 and I Find It Hard to Say (Rebel) are tracks 8 and 9 on disc 1 Lauryn's MTV Unplugged Set.

Senior year in high school, someone got ahold of a Twin Peaks box set.  Every episode.  From the pilot right down to the end of the second season, when everyone knew the axe was falling, and things took a turn for the unintelligible. 

For a month, a handful of us watched every night we could, sometimes multiple episodes at a time.

I remember it being a brilliantly strange and addictively terrifying show, the cause of both uncontrollable laughter and recurring nightmares.

And I remember deciding that if Agent Cooper used a voice recorder to take notes, so should I.

Almost ten years later, last week, before I drove north to be best man for one of those high school classmates, Micaela the intern delivered the machinery I'd ordered.  I admired it for a moment, loaded it with two AAA batteries, fiddled with the buttons to make sure I understood the controls, and decided I was about to have the most productive weekend of my life.  I'd help one of my very favorite people keep his almost mother in law sane, and I'd pour into the recorder enough important work related thoughts to let me vault back into action as soon as I stepped back in the office.

Well, I am back in action, and, as far as I can tell, I'm still on my feet and scrambling steadily, but I can't say I owe many thanks to my voice recording skills. 

Go ahead and judge for yourself, but I think I have quite a bit to learn about using the recorder professionally and not just as a toy.

Here's a sampling:

-If I get pulled over, and I'm suspected for having been talking on my cell phone, are the cops allowed to look at my cell phone records and be like: dude you were fucking talking on your phone the last two hours!?  Or is that sort of illegal?  Because I would be in trouble if it was legal.  I am a problem when it comes to talking on the cell phone, which means I need to get that thing, that little earbud thing.  And I wonder what happened to the one I got before.  Anyway, I wonder.  About the law.

-Why is it that dreams, even sometimes when they're super intense and you feel the intensity, why is it so difficult to bring back the memory? Maybe because the thought is something not actually experienced but only imagined?

-When a clock says it's 11:11, but it's wrong, is it still good luck to kiss that clock?  My sense is yes, but maybe not as good as the 11:11 that is on time or at least approximately on time.  I'm thinking about this car clock right now, which I think is about 18 minutes slow, which is a pretty silly clock situation if you ask me.

-Sitting here listening to extra innings in the Phillies' game, which is a total bonus on my car ride home.  We're going into the bottom of the 11th, and I'm listening here to the ads, and I'm getting excited and feeling my muscles tense up in this ridiculous baseball situation and screaming, to no one, and pumping my fist, COME ON PHILS!  Ridiculous.  But.  I love the Phils.  What can I say.

-I should, I think, maybe, in my weird craziness, write down, in my Posterous blog or wherever, the fact that I recognize that everything I'm writing or everything I'm putting out there might be totally crazy.  I recognize that there's a possibility that I am full of shit.  But I'm doing it anyway, despite that recognition, out of the possibility, A, that I'm not full of shit, and, B, that, even if I'm full of shit, there are probably some nuggets in my full of shitness...and nuggets and shit become a very dangerous metaphor...anyway, maybe despite our craziness, or potentially because of our craziness, we are able to offer these other things to the world.  And I want to say this.  I want to throw it out there and say: Maybe I'm nuts.  Maybe I am totally totally nuts.  But.  Maybe not, and, maybe, even if I am, it's still kind of good to get these thoughts out there, because there might be something in here that's good, thats useful, that's not crazy.  And so I'm doing it.  Because I want to.  Or because I want to preserve that. 

So.  There you go. Figured it'd be appropriate to end with that last one.  A window into a mind that had been driving all day with a tape recorder sitting in the passenger seat. 

A little embarrassing.  But that's cool.  Radical transparency.  And an illustration of the fact that I haven't come anywhere close to achieving Agent Cooper style tape recorder productivity.

I've been hearing about a game called Mafia for years.

I finally played for the first time tonight.

But we didn't play Mafia. We played Werewolf.

We told stories not of stool pigeons, cement shoes, and made men but rather of full moons, seers, and villagers terrorized by a magical predator.

We told ghost stories.

And I think ghost stories are terrifying. Still. At age 26. Adrenaline rush scary.

It's an awesome game, whatever you want to call it. It's a game I can't wait to teach my sister and cousins.

But it's a game that might give me nightmares tonight. Nightmares about werewolves and the mysteries they create.