The Moving Dream

Felix's first look at a cake and candles. Hypnotic!

Last week, the night before my birthday was a restless night for all of us, which sucked because I was way more tired than I wanted to be on my “special” day.

I watched DNC speeches until right before bed, which amped me up and sent my mind replaying the great moments of the night. Around 2 AM, my dog FREAKED and ran downstairs barking and growling her guard-dog bark, so I got all half-awake irrationally nervous about what she (thought) she heard. I actually wondered for a moment if I should start keeping a knife under my mattress! And Felix woke up four times instead of twice, but only ate once. I think his tummy was bothering him because it was bigger and rounder than usual.

When we all settled down around 3 AM, I got wrapped up in my recurring moving dream. It’s usually one of two scenarios: I’ve moved out of an apartment but forget to get the last of my stuff, and I realize that all kinds of junk has been sitting in it for many months…and I still have to move it all and pay back rent. Or, like this time, I'm in a faraway place and I have to figure out how to get myself, my two cats, tons of boxes and some furniture back to Idaho on an airplane. Usually I’m in Mexico, but this time we were in California. 

Interestingly, my cats are always in the dream – I’ve had them for 10 years and we’ve moved together many times. Jayda is almost never in the dream, I’ve had her for 2 years but we’ve never moved together. Something else of note: I left Mexico and California (in real life) when I was good and ready. But I left Texas for a job offer in California, so I never dream that I’m trying to get out of Texas. Perhaps because I wasn’t quite ready to leave there when I did.

Anyway, I spent my sleeping hours trying to figure out how I was going to get two cats on the airplane (airlines allow one cat per person) and what I was going to do with all the boxes. Then I started taking apart some massive bedroom sets and pieces of furniture, so I could somehow get them back home.

The dream itself isn’t surprising. In real life, I moved 8 times during 6 years of college, then moved from Mexico to Idaho to Texas to California to Idaho again in a span of 5 years. And the previous weekend I helped my sister-in-law clean and move a bunch of furniture to sell before their upcoming move, so that explains that. But it’s still exhausting!