I'm at a friend's house playing poker. The friend's mom (an older black woman) sees my pocket Aces and tells me to raise. I'm annoyed that she's giving away my hand but politely ignore her. She tells me how much to raise and starts picking up my chips (which are pieces of bread) and begin putting them into the pot. I politely tell her I know how to play my own game. She says, "Then why don't you and Susannah go upstairs and do your homework?" I tell her we're not in school (even though Susannah is) and we have no homework and she should mind her own business. My tone is still polite though I'm speaking very firmly now as I tell her she's not our mother.

I'm joining an all-female firefighting squad (or I'm a female joining an all male squad). I'm trying to climb into the back of a moving truck (which is now a plane). The woman on board helps me and my mom in. Then she helps guide my mom back out, letting her freefall. She asks me if my mom knows when to pop the parachute and I tell her I don't know (though I'm not too worried about it). Later, on the ground, I see my mom come down. Her seat separates from her close to the ground and she floats slowly down. I tell her to pop the chute and she does, though it opens halfway as she hits the ground slowly.

We're at Tom & Lynnette's country home, Tom (though he's Martin from upstairs) and I are on the lookout for a bear roaming the property. We see it and I try to take a shot with my bolt-action rifle. I see Susannah, Lynnette and Everett coming into the house and I go to warn them about the bear.

Later, I look out the window to see Martin and someone (me?) in a large truck drive by. The top of the truck carries a sign/banner that says "Proposition (#)" and something about saving bears. I yell out the window, "Are you serious? Is that a joke?" Martin shakes his head and tells me that he's helping the local rangers catch the bear without killing it. Suddenly outside the window I see a huge animal (like a racoon or possum). I try to point it out to Lynnette but she can't seem to see it.

Later...

I'm changing Sofia's diaper with a friend's teenage daughter (a cross between John's girls and Frank's girls). I show her Sofia diaper. It's so full it feels like a breast implant. We play with it for a bit and I hold it up to her (non-existent) chest. We get into bed together and I spoon her. I start getting a hard-on and she asks me if I'm going to be able to sleep with her in bed. I tell her "Probably not." and she gets out of the bed.

The store had moved to a rural location & I'm working the night shift. It's been slow, though we'vehad a little bit of business. I assume the email I sent out got to at least a few of our old customers. I pull upthe shade and look outside to see nothing but woods. Getting a little scared, I pull them back down. A large group of customers come in, including a few old customers. One guy returns a stack of videos and wants to know how much he owes. I punch them in and tell him that they're all on time. Another customer starts asking me about some title.

Later...

I'm at a construction site talking to (or hearing about) some guy who's working as an assistant to a foreign architect. As I walk through the site, I hear the foreigner (my dad) neaby complaining about his work and his boss. I walk around the corner and look in his office (a dark & long corridor of a room). I see that he's talking on the phone. I say hello and he peeks over at me, asking, "Is that my wife?" I say in Chinese, "No, it's not your wife." He sees me and continues talking on the phone. I wait a second and then walk off, figuring he doesn't want to talk to me. Fuming, I storm back into his office. He's off the phone now and reading a magazine. I stomp straight up to him and in his face, "At least I have the courtesy to pretend to be your son, you can't even pretend to be my father?!" He continues ignoring me. "What, I'm not like your wife and your daughter that you never raised?" I continue, "I don't have major problems you can fix?!" He says, "How am I supposed to know about your life when you don't tell me?" I yell at him, "You were there!!" I finally storm off again. On my way out, I see some people coming back from lunch break, including Diana from Amoeba.

I'm in a cafeteria-style dining room of a seafood restaurant. Susannah's at work and Sofia is with my mom. I look over the menu and order something. I spend a long time eating & reading at my leisure. When I go to the bathroom, I see a tub full of large raw jumbo shrimp. Back at my table, I overhear the people at the next table say, "We've been getting bread for a long time and finally we get the "Best of Everything." I look at the menu and find the "Best of Everything" menu item. It includes a half dozen varieties of seafood, including "panko shrimp." I go back to the bathroom and find a large tray of tiny peel-and-eat shrimp. I grab a handful and stuff it in my mouth. I go back to the dining room and look for panko shrimp on th menu but can't seem to find it. The menu is a newspaper and I flip thru the news sections. I go back to the bathroom again to grab another handful of shrimp. Back at my table, I see a bunch of Susannah's old coworkers come in. They smile and greet me with surprise. Kai asks me if I'm babysitting and I tell them Sofia's with my mom. A young white woman with them is confused about the gender of my baby.

I'm walking out of a school carrying Sofia. I'm trying to get home but want to avoid the walk to the subway station. I walk across the street to where people are waiting for a bus. I see Arlene topless and 6 months pregnant talking to a mother with a child. I walk up to talk to her but she doesn't recognize me. I say, "Remember Susannah Roitman? Her husband Dan? Daughter Sofia?" We greet each other and admire each other's babies. Her baby is very skinny and has a very small head. He shivers and I try to look for a blanket to put him in. She heads off and I wish she could give me a ride home but don't ask. I figure it's too out of the way for her since we're south of San Francisco and close to where she lives. I suddenly realize I need to get to the subway station.

I'm downhill a ways before I realize I'd forgotten the stroller. I head back into the school, ducking my head to get inside. I start strapping Sofia in the stroller, noticing how small she is by comparison.

I'm looking at a DVD of a previous version of "The Heart is Deceiptful Above All Things" where 3 teenagers adopt a young boy.

Later...

I'm in China hanging out with democracy activists. We're out in a dreary day manning a hot dog stand, trying to raise money. A white man comes up (he looks like a government official or a well-published professor) and buys a hot dog. The person behind the stand gives him change from a big stack of one dollar American bills. The American starts talking about the movement in fairly good Mandarin. He's talking about how 20 years ago the government still cared about its people and used good building materials. He can't find the word for limestone but points down to the ground to make his point.

I'm in front of a large abandoned office building with a guy and a girl. The guy is shooting at targets hung on the windows with a cowboy-style revolver. At a few hundred feet away, he keeps missing. The girl and I are lying on the ground near the building. We get showered with glass shards and tell the guy (Dylan from 90210?) to stop shooting. We start picking the glass shards out of our skin. I'm picking shards out of the girl (who's Indian) and some of them look like large gems. I joke, "Hey, I got you a rock." She looks very serious and says, "Don't joke about that." as though she were Dylan's girlfriend but had feelings for me.

Now we're in a bedroom at a friend's house. I'm feeling the girl (now Susannah)'s breasts. We decide to have sex. I tell her to close the door so others wouldn't walk in on us. The friends are watching Chinese TV in the next room and it's pretty loud. Susannah goes out to the bathroom and I cover my naked body with the sheets and wait.

I'm in a hair salon flipping through a magazine/website trying to find pictures of Benicio Del Toro to show the stylist. a coworker and a coworker/boss come up to me to talk. I tell them I'm stressed out because I can't find the right pictures (I'm looking for the H & M ad pictures). The boss harasses me a bit and I get irritated with him. I crumple up some paper and throw it at him. I crumple up one piece into a point and stick it in his ear.