Last night I had a dream about my ex-girlfriend. For some reason, she left me with her cell phone (an old Motorola flip-phone in the dream) and I had to look for her. I found the guy who she said was her new boyfriend in a parking lot. He was a tool, denying that she meant anything to him. I remember the parking lot clearly, it was a concrete parking garage, like the ones that are on the first floors of office buildings I’ve seen in California.

And the worst part of this? The only reason I woke up was because of a torrent of rain pouring on the roof above my head. There was so much running water that I had to get up out of bed and go to the bathroom. It usually rains often in Portland, but not so hard that it makes me have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

My father is now drinking all the juice out of the pickle jars and telling my mother that it evaporated. When we question that, he tells us the rest of the family is teaming up on him and he’s being persecuted.