Dream: I see a house. Within that house are small dark furred animals. Dogs? Raccoons? I am supposed to rescue them or something but have to come back later. I am driving down a dark highway. Beside the highway is a long shallow swale covered by a thick overarching hedge. I know there is a runaway who needs help. She has been living rough for weeks. I find her in the dark, lying on a filthy swag with her small dark dog or raccoon which we must leave behind. I need to get her to help. She has short dark hair and is wearing a pair of stained in the bottom cargo pants. She has sunk so low that she has fouled herself. I put a grey jacket surreptitiously on the passenger seat for her to sit on. She doesn't want to go to hospital. She wants to go to the beach. I say I will take her there but I know he has to get help. We are on a stretch of road I recognise from previous dreams. It is labeled 28th Street in the dream but it is not the 28th street of Grand Rapids. I always have trouble negotiating my way around this area; there is a cloverleaf and although I can see where I have to go, getting there is almost impossible for the road I choose leads me away instead of towards it. But I do get there and I recognise this place too. It is upstairs in a kind of mall. The entrance to the shop is off a balcony overlooking the first floor. It is nighttime and all the lights are on. It is an antique or 2nd hand shop run by Asians (Chinese? Thai?) There is always something interesting in this shop, made up of rooms leading off one another in a serpentine design. But I don't find anything I want to buy.

Then I am driving. Jack the cockatoo is in the car with me. He is his usual belligerent self. It is daylight now, a seaside sunshine. Even though I can't see the sea it feels like the beach. In front of the car are four cockatoos although as they stand one behind the other I have difficulty counting them. They have black tips to their feathers and so, I see, does Jack. Suddenly Jack drops all his defenses. It is wonderful, joyous, exhilarating. He allows me to love him. He trusts me. I am ecstatic.

R also had a dream last night. One of his violent dreams. The doctor said he probably suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome stemming from his days as a cop. Anyway, I heard him count, although he didn't enunciate the words, One! Two! Three! Four! and then in a frightened voice, "Who are you?" He was jerking, becoming quite agitated so as to avoid another session as we've had before when he's struck me or worse, once, when I awoke because he had his hand around my neck and was choking me, I woke him up. He didn't remember a thing this morning. I am intrigued by that fear in his voice and the question, "Who are you?" It would be interesting to know who he saw.

I have ordered a new computer this morning. $1400 (including 3 years hardware warranty). A Dell computer. I looked up the age of this one and it is almost 6 years old. It's been a good computer but it is starting to wind down. Programs take forever to load, it makes a grinding sound when it starts up. I don't like the fact that computers don't last for longer than they do. Recycling computers is a non-event around here and so contributes to landfill, poisoning of the ground, etc. Still, it is the age where a computer is a necessity...well, I suppose they aren't necessities but I've come to rely upon having one.

I told Jack about my dream this morning, my nose pressed against the mesh while he glowered from within. I even got teary recalling it, savouring the feeling of being able to love him and be accepted and trusted in return. Alas, my tears made no impression.