Like a dream come true

Last night I had this dream.

I was at some house - I think it was mine - looking at work that needed to be done. There was an old structure in the yard that needed to be dealt with and I had some people help by moving it over a few yards (never mind that it was the size of a two-car garage. It was rickety and, apparently, not as heavy as you'd think.)

Underneath was a big puddle of mud and water. It was worse than I thought - I mean the entire structure had been straddling this giant mud puddle. Who knows how long it had been sitting there, stagnant. Or how long it would take to dry up. What a mess.

Then one of the people who had helped move the thing showed me what he had done. He had dug out some grass and debris by the fence at one edge, and all the water was draining harmlessly away into a drainage ditch or someplace where it wouldn't do any harm. The whole thing would drain and dry up, and then we could decide what to do with the space.

So that was the dream, pretty much. The dance instructor from my gym was also there, but I don't think he really had much to do with it.

Where did it come from?

• Well, we did have a nasty old structure that had to be removed from our property.
• We do have ongoing issues with mud collecting in a big puddle right at the gate.
• I did watch part of Cheaper By The Dozen 2 right before falling asleep - where the father was trying to fix up a lake house that had fallen into disrepair.
• A few days ago I was reading this website about feng shui as it applies in a non-Asian culture, and the most relevant part of it (to my mind) was the emphasis on getting rid of broken or ugly possessions and clearing away physical clutter (which apparently stagnates the flow of energy) in order to make way for more positive things. I don't know how far on board I am with the flow of energy thing, but clutter preventing progress is directly applicable to my workspace, I tell you what.
  


• On another level, last night Alex and I did have a discussion about...let's just say, ways that we have not yet adapted to living as a family of four again. I wondered if maybe the dream was about uncovering something not very pleasant, and then finding that it wasn't as big a problem as it seemed at first glance.

Or at least I'd like to think that.

But then 15 minutes ago, as he was driving out to pick up the kids, Alex paused at the gate and said, "you know how we always get that big mud puddle all the way across here? I thought maybe if we dug out some grass and debris by the fence, it could drain out into the drainage ditch there."

And then when I told him I just had a dream like that last night, he said "so maybe you can do it while I'm out." Stupid crappy dream. Where's the shovel?