This morning, I stumbled blearily out of bed. "I had a terrible nightmare just now," I said to D.
"So did I," he interjected, "It was about a humongulous."
"A what?"
"A humongulous."
"I don't know what that is."
He begins confidently tapping away in a flourish of Google triumph. But the search gods are fickle - there's no trace of this word. He tries several alternate spellings: no luck.
"Why don't you tell me what it means?" I suggest.
"It's a tiny, miniature version of a person...."
"A homunculus."
"That's it!"
"Why was that a nightmare?"
Defensively: "It just was."
Pause. I ponder.
"Wait. Why would a *tiny* person be called a humongolous...?"
(In a rush:) "I don't know. I don't like you."

My dream, overlooked in the tumult of homunculi, involved having to climb an appallingly huge mountain, and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. (Thanks for the subtle - almost impenetrable - response to my Mt. Grademore anxiety, unconscious mind. You always do such seamless work.) Suddenly my friend Leslie showed up, and announced that she was here in her (new) professional capacity as a (and I quote) "mountain dominatrix.". She made me first go up and then into the mountain, where we then watched a Canadian-style Heritage holographic performance about the history of miners' unions. This quickly devolved into a a spy caper in which I was being chased by a serial killer, whom I had to killed in appalling, gory detail in order to keep him from murdering me and my grandmother.

I think I need to read fewer crime thrillers. And grade fewer papers.