This morning I got up from bed with one intention: to rent a house in the middle of Oakland, maybe Rockridge or Temescal. I was still in the middle of a dream, and I think it’s the closest to sleepwalking I’ve come since I was a kid.
I’d been having a dream in which Lala and I were living in the old hovel apartment that haunts my dreams. Again and again, I find myself there. Like the dreams of tsunamis and not being able to get into Venice, it’s one that recurs at least once every couple of months. In the dream, I was standing in the bathroom looking at the floor that was cracking and falling in by the toilet. I could see where Lala’s footprints were denting the filthy linoleum. I knew that the house was falling down the hill, but I also knew that since it was our house, we could get $2800 for rent for it (this came directly from a real Zillow email from yesterday). I thought, hey! We’ll rent this place out, and rent a smaller place for ourselves in the neighborhood where there are restaurants and shops and cafes.
I literally got out of bed, thinking that I’d like to pay maybe seven or eight–hundred dollars for a place. I was headed for my computer and Craigslist when I ran into the real Lala in the real living room of our real house. Startled, I thought, Hey! I love this place! I don’t want to move!
The funniest part is that I thought we could rent in Rockridge for $700. And I just looked – there’s only one place for rent there that would allow the animals, and it’s $4850. Of course.
And I love this house. I love this neighborhood, though there isn’t any place to walk except up the hill (which isn’t bad!). I guess yesterday I was thinking again that we could rent this out for our mortgage and move to New Zealand if we wanted to. It’s always in the back of my mind. Not like I have time to play much more with the idea right now – not sure we could afford to live in or near Wellington, where we’d want to be. But it’s still a thought.
I’ve become a good sleeper. Not always: I had terrible insomnia two nights this week. But sometimes, maybe most of the time, I SLEEP. After seventeen years of a job which prevented this, I’m still amazed that this is my life. I sleep. It’s wonderful.
The app Mindshift has great insights for the nights you can’t sleep. I have insomnia several nights a month related to my damn ovaries but now I don’t fret about it too much. It was a welcome reframing as I used to fret about it a lot. And Do It – move to Wellington, even for a year. Life is really damn short and you might hate it or you might love it but it would be totally worth it either way.
I, too, am now a good sleeper after over a decade of insomnia. Oh, how I had missed dreaming.
I find I have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep when it’s a full moon or the Northern Lights are active. So, the dog and I bundle up, hang out under the moon and the brilliant stars and the dancing Lights for however long it takes her to refresh her doggie post it notes around the property (and is highly dependent on the number of degrees above or below zero F). More than once I’ve pulled my gaze away from the brilliance above, checking on her whereabouts,scanning for moose or fox or coyote, to find her gazing up at the sky, totally absorbed, slowly wagging her tail.
It’s nights like that leave me thinking I’m sleeping away the best part of a 24 hour cycle.
What’s going on in your night sky?