I’ve felt like such a noisy little balloon deflating and flying around and going nuts inside of quiet rooms all day. It doesn’t make sense how dead everything has been lately. I need to go somewhere where people besides lunch ladies are alive. Or maybe I'll just be a lunch lady.

Today third grade was much better than usual. The halls were lined with construction paper christmas wreaths and santa clauses with cotton ball beards, and it was precious. The kids were all super happy because they have an early dismissal today. When I took them on their bathroom break, one girl said, “Tomorrow is my uncle’s birthday!” and that started a chain reaction. They were all lined up yelling their stories to me as quickly and loudly as possible. It went something like this:

“Tomorrow is my uncle’s birthday!”

“Tomorrow is MY birthday!”

“Tomorrow I’m going to the Smokey Mountains!”

“I knew someone who got Smokey Mountain Spotted Fever once!”

“I watched old Yeller yesterday. He got shot!”

“My uncle ate 6 pounds of dressing on thanksgiving!”

“I ate 7 pounds of cherry pie on thanksgiving!”

And so on!

And then we were reading about Johnny Appleseed, about how he lived with settlers while he was planting orchards because he didn’t have a home of his own and moved around a lot, and several of the kids were so puzzled over why he didn’t just buy an RV to stay in. I laughed quietly to myself for three minutes.

The very best part was during Social Studies. I was working with two boys who sometimes unintentionally disrupt class because of their inability to sit still and stay calm, and one of them said, “Ms. Martin, can you help me with this? You would be a really good teacher.”

And then he looked at the other boy and said, “Ms. Martin really would be a good teacher,” and the other boy agreed.

It completely made my day.

I had the scariest dream last night. When it began, I was at a playground,and a lady asked me to carry her baby. The baby was too heavy, but I ended up carrying her anyway. Later I somehow found myself at the mother's house and needed to use the phone to call my parents to get home, but I couldn't the phone to work. I went to their neighbor's house and the neighbors were all people I know in real life, only they were creepy in my dream. So I went back to the house with the baby. In the house was a family of all ladies, and even the babies were girls.

When I went back to the first house, the ladies are all in a van looking for a pair of gloves. It was very cold and dark in my dream. It felt like it does on most Halloween nights. The ladies told me to help look, and they say I can use the phone if I do. At one point, I saw my mother's car drive by, so I chased it and tried to flag it down. She didn't stop driving, though, so I had to go back to the van.

Later I looked up to see a different van stopping in the street. A soldier who is dressed like a sheriff got out, and he was wearing a very strange crown that was made of gold. There were random people walking on the street even though it was at night, and the soldier walked up to them and asked them a question. He was speaking in a different language so the people didn't understand him. So, he shot the people.

The next parts were all very vivid.

Next the soldier noticed us at the van. At first I just watched and didn't know what to do, and then I heard a gunshot. One lady yelled, "Oh god, there's a bunch of them!" and we all ducked. They all came after us. I remember the one with the golden hat standing over me and pointing his gun towards me, and all I thought about was how I was going to die. It was very strange to me that I didn't think about God or my parents or anything. I just thought about how I was going to die right then, and I covered my face with my hands.

I remember hearing gun shots and feeling bullets flying past me, but for some reason he didn't kill me. After he left a bunch of soldiers came up and stared at me.

I pretended to be dead, but I did a horrible job, but they still didn't notice I was alive, so they left.

That was where I was right before I woke up. I was on gravel with part of me under a van, thinking about how much better everything would be if I could have caught my mother when she drove by.