rivers_bend

last week we had a really quiet afternoon at work, and my colleague whom I was on the phones with was asking me about life on the California coast. This led to us both looking at property websites, as she and her brother and mom are thinking of buying a house down there. We found a place in Santa Cruz (home of my heart) that was amazing. 150 acres of meadowland and woods, with a huge, gorgeous main house, a guest cottage, and a caretakers cottage, three barns, an alpaca paddock, a swimming pool, sea views... incredible. A snip at fifteen million dollars. But whatever. That was also the week when people were posting the links to the plans for tiny houses websites and talking about that, and I went into full-on fantasy mode, thinking of all the little houses that could be built on the place, and how there could be a huge vegetable garden, and chickens, and it could be a real proper fangirl commune.

I imagined everyone having their own space, and then using the big house as communal area, with signups for the TV, and if someone was watching something you wanted, you could just join them, and I thought about cooking in the big kitchen, with people sitting around chatting to me, and maybe some other people helping to make big meals to put in the fridge, and people could come and heat up lasagne or meatloaf or stew or soup whenever they wanted. And we'd take turns working in the garden if that suited, or taking care of the animals, and spinners could spin to their hearts' content, and knitters could knit, and one of the barns could have a south-facing wall replaced with glass and it could be a huge artist's studio, and people could use it to paint or make jewelry or sculpt or whatever they liked, and we could have a little recording studio, and a fire ring, and bat boxes in the eaves, and hummingbird feeders everywhere.

And it made me really really happy to think about. I would love that so much. I never felt cut out for the communal living situations in like, Berkeley, because the people (from the looks of the ads) were not people with whom I had much in common. But yeah. This sounds great to me.

On the way home that night, I was talking to my mom, and she asked how my day was, and I told her about the gorgeous property, and how great it would be to buy it and build a fangirl commune. She immediately had a thousand practical reasons why it would never work (primarily that even with thirty people, you'd all need $500k mortgages to be able to afford it, and that's before you started making any changes to the property), and I was so taken aback. I realized, talking to her a little bit more, that she doesn't have places she goes to in her head that are nice to think about. If she wants fantasy, she reads a book or watches a movie. She only dreams of things if she can also logic a way for them to happen. I'll admit, at first, it made me feel like a freak.

But then I got off the phone with her, and remembered that being able to think like I do is what makes me be able to tell stories, and I am FAR from the only person who can do that.

Tonight I was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep so DST doesn't catch me, and I drifted off again, imagining the solar panels on all the roofs, and the windmill on the property's edge, and that wonderful kitchen, with all the counter space a girl could want, and bar stools for my friends to sit on, and, I'll admit, we were listening to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and I was maybe shaking my ass a little in time with the music, and I thought I need to write this down. So, here I am.

and now I am going to get back to dreaming, and hopefully sleeping.