Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Someone recently gave me a book called 10 Ways to Unleash Your Imagination, and when I showed it to Amy, her face skipped right past amusement and landed straight on terror. She said, "Do you really need to unleash your imagination — more?" Which is a fair question, coming from her, since she's the one who spends half her life worrying that I'm going to accidentally drive my car into a ravine because I'm busy imagining what kind of dinosaurs used to live in these mountains.

Amy said that most people's imagination unleashed is like a lap dog or a cat: cuddly and warm and manageable. And that my imagination unleashed is like if you tried to keep a pet dragon in your back yard. I said that her nephew has an imagination twice as big as mine. And she said yeah, but that he doesn't have disposable income or a license to operate a motor vehicle.

Anyway, I've been reading the book on the sly, and one of the things it says is that your best creativity is right when you wake up from your dreams and right before you go to sleep. And so it gives these tips about prolonging that sleep/awake state at night so you can then wake up and record your insanity. (Like holding marbles in your hand above a plastic bowl.) And also the book says you should write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. So here are my entries since I started:

Morning one: Yeah. I'm not writing that dream down for anyone to see. Ever.

Night one: Well, that fucking marble trick didn't work because Scout ate three of them as soon as they hit the bowl and woke me right up and now the only thing I can imagine is more vet bills.

Morning two: Having dinner with my sister's conservative evangelical sisters-in-law. One of them said God gave her a message for me: she prophesied that I would die in a tragic car accident in five days. Paying for dinner I saw a friend who was killed in a car accident earlier this year. She said, "See you Monday." Which is ... five days from today. Creepy!

Night two: Investigating Abraham Lincoln's death with Veronica Mars, both wearing jeans, everyone staring. I think she's into me.

Morning three: Visited a ranch where all the animals can fly. A horse said he would show me how because he can see I have a good soul, can be responsible with magic. (I knew it!)

Night three: Another non-recordable.

Morning four: I was a pirate fighting Voldemort who was also a pirate. An evil wizard pirate.

Night four: Someone broke into my house, and I totally flashed and kicked his ass! And Scout was baying and baying, and I was trying to hush her because I didn't want the CIA to hear her and come find me.

Morning five: Amy and I testing out different inventions to help us mountain bike on the moon. You wouldn't believe the trails on the moon! The animals are the same as animals on my trails (squirrels, chipmunks, etc.), but they're all hot pink.

Night five: Color-your-own Converse All-Stars with special magic crayons.

Morning six: Nope.

I don't feel like more creativity has been unleashed since I started keeping my journal. In fact, the only thing I think I've discovered about myself is that my dreams are 50 percent salacious. I think maybe it's time to move on to the next chapter.