As long as everyone's sharing their weird dreams...

So (e:dragonlady7) and I moved to California so that she could go to school there. Things worked out well, because my sister had just moved out of her old apartment and worked a deal with the landlord letting me move in. The house was a gorgeous big Victorian thing [the kind that doesn't actually exist in California anywhere] and my sister was renting the first floor; the landlord lived upstairs. The house was divided after it was built, so some rooms belonged to us, some rooms belonged to the landlord, and some doors were not intended to be opened. Furthermore, my sister had not moved out completely, so you couldn't tell who owned what just by looking at which rooms were still furnished. Specifically, she had left all her books with instructions to sell or recycle them all, along with some nice furniture.

My mom was kind enough to come down with us to help us move in. She left a little after (e:dragonlady7) went to her first day of school, and she left us her geriatric dog and cat to take care of. [This had not been discussed, but it's difficult to turn your back on sad beagly eyes. (e:dragonlady7) was likely to flip her lid, but she, too, would have to face down the beagly eyes.] Since I didn't have a job lined up yet, I was on move-in duty, and I spent most of the day inside, getting used to my new surroundings. That's always a weird feeling, getting comfortable in a place that is, technically speaking, your Home, even though you've never seen it before in your life and it's 3000 miles from anything you consider to be familiar. But things were going well.

...until the afternoon, when I heard a knock on my front door. I opened the door, and the guy on the other side stared at me in bewilderment: "Who are you?" I stared back in bewilderment: "Who are you?" Turns out he owns the place, and I answered his front door by accident. He was a pretty nice guy, relatively friendly, but he was the kind of guy who secretly judges you. He won't say anything bad to you or call you out on anything, but that doesn't stop him from judging you. Mom's beagle was happy to see him. He did not seem to be as happy to see the beagle, not that he would say anything. He also seemed to take exception that (e:dragonlady7) and I were living in sin in his house, far be it for him to say anything.

But that was the first time that I realized that we didn't really have full run of the first floor. In fact, there was a large anteroom in front of the house that I began to doubt was ours. It was separated from the rest of the first floor by a number of large, wooden doors that made a lot of noise - so when (e:dragonlady7) came home from school later and started thumping around in the anteroom, I was sure that the owner could hear that's where she was and just knew that she was going through his stuff - not that it's any of his business.

(e:dragonlady7) was less bugged out about the cat and dog than I had expected, but we eventually realized that they needed to be fed, and we didn't have any pet food. I had a mild case of agoraphobia in that I hadn't left the house at all yet, and I didn't really know where the pet store was, and also Californians drive like crazy people.

That's when I woke up, twenty minutes after I should have.

- Z