Note: I dictated this into my phone’s WordPress app using text-to-speech just after waking up from the dream described. I’ve edited it to clean up glaring TTS inaccuracies and added some punctuation, but it’s otherwise as I originally spoke it.

Masses of people are shoulder to shoulder, cheek to jowl in tiny rooms and endless hallways and elevators shouting and talking and whimpering and crying for hours endlessly. Elevators that connect to other elevators going up and down. Shuffling from place to place, memories only lasting moments. It seems like we’ve been here forever but I can only remember the last few minutes.

I find an empty hallway leading to a screen door with a sign that says Emergency Exit. It looks like this has not been used in decades. On the other side of the door is an abyss. I didn’t go through but I sat at the door and breathe the clean air.

I share this secret with one and then another companion. The second has a son. I don’t know how he remembers he has a son; something about being a parent much transcend the memory wipe that happens every few minutes. The son is having a panic attack and can’t breathe, so we bring him down the empty hallway to the emergency exit to sit by the screen door. After a few minutes he is yanked from his father’s grasp and drawn back into the fray by an invisible hand. There’s a warning message; we can feel it, but we can’t hear it. It says something like Boy has spent too much time outside. Penalty. His father cries so we reassure him will find him again. We’ll always find him.

I look at the screen door and wonder why I’ve never opened it. I push the latch. The door swings open and I sit on the ledge and look out. Blackness. Far below I can see a very dim outlines of rectangular shapes, stacks of something. As I keep gazing out into the dark it seems like the floor below is not as far as it was. I turn around, grab the ledge and lower myself until I am hanging by my fingertips from the screen door. I look down. The floor now seems just a few feet below me. I let go. I fall in slow motion and land on what I can only describe as a stack of empty dvd boxes, but on a scale where I am very small or they are very very large. Looking around I see endless stacks of various heights in the distance.

Off to my left there is a hill and beyond the hill what seems to be a building. A low, long office with lights in the windows. More of the lights come on and I see movement on the hill heading towards me. They’re coming.

And that’s when I wake up.

As of today I’m at 62% and less than $1,000 to go to make my Team in Training fundraising goal of $2,400 by the end of this month. Sales through my Amazon storefront have slowed down a bit. So I’m making this offer to my readers and Twitter followers:

Donate at least $25 (My LLS page, or use the widget to the right) and you will receive a special gift from me. A real, tangible thing, not just a Thank-You email (though you’ll get one of those, too!). What is it? It’s a surprise, but I guarantee you’ll like it. Just make sure you include a mailing address in your donation.

Thanks again for your support and GO TEAM!

Less than 24 hours after first announcing my participation in Team in Training, I’m already more than 10% closer to my fundraising goal. Thanks so very much to those who have donated so far. Everyone else, the widget on the right shows my progress. Please consider donating to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and my first half-marathon.

(If the widget doesn’t load or you’re mobile, my Team in Training page has donation links too.)

It’s way too late to back out now. I’ve already sent the first fundraising email (some of you may have received it, and some may even have already donated – thanks!) and I’m fully committed.

Committed to what? To running my first half-marathon – the Avenue of the Giants on May 6 – as part of Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Team in Training helps me train for my race and in return I am fundraising for LLS.

I hope to have as many of you as possible virtually cheering me on, and I’m asking you to help by making a donation to my fundraising campaign.

Please visit my Team in Training page to donate online quickly and securely plus learn more about my progress. You will receive a confirmation of your donation by email and I will be notified as soon as you make your donation. You can also see my progress in the handy widget on the right side of this page.

Each donation helps accelerate finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Nearly 958,000 Americans are battling these blood cancers. I am hoping that my participation in Team In Training will help bring them hope and support.

On behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thank you very much for your support. I greatly appreciate your generosity.

I’ll post updates here as my training and fundraising progress and as I get closer to the actual race. And of course, I’ll post race-day photos.

Thanks again.

Me either.