As in a dream.

As long as I've been married to Leif, not as long as we've lived together, I've had this recurring dream that I'm back in New York, trying to rebuild my life, renting a new room in an SRO and wondering whether SAG has a 15 year old check for me. Crappily, I don't have cable in my SRO but I'm going to auditions, off-off Broadway. And still I can only play a kid, a kid with faint lines on my forehead. I take the bus everywhere because the sliding card thing for the subway turnstile confuses me. They didn't have it when I last lived here. I'm daunted by it. I, at some point, ever so vaguely remember I have a husband somewhere and he looks like Leif. That's as close as Leif ever gets to being in my dreams, though my father who died when I was 17 is frequently in my dreams. I imagine it's because he wants to meet Leif.

Granted I am lamely psychic or have laser intuition, but I was pretty close in those dreams. Prophecies, especially dream ones, are more symbolic than exact. So I actually find myself in Venice Beach, where I lived in between NY and with Leif. I am walking on the same boardwalk. Everything is a little dirtier but the same, but Yuppies have rented all the apartments and I can find nothing under $13000. The crap place on Rose that's Venice's answer to an SRO (a room with a multiple-y shared bathroom down a hall), is billing itself as a "bachelor apartment" now, and is charging $1000 for the pleasure of no bathroom. Hopefully, the winos are ensconced and have rent control.

Like the dream, I have a husband back somewhere, specifically in Castle Green, but he is more or less not a factor in this new life. He has Spike, our little white pound dog, because he couldn't hack it here. Spikey's vision at 15 is sketchier than I care to admit and he likes his creature comforts, not Missie's concrete floor. Ironic in a way as many of the floors in Castle Green are a concrete or a cement, I forget the difference, but they're highly polished and fancy. This has raised parts where there's pipe and the beach has shifted and peeling white paint. Isabel, our 5 year old Pomeranian, can find it funny. She can see it all clearly and navigate between the dog beds and Missie's little yard which she loves. She's never had a yard before. I haven't either, at least my own. Not long after we moved into Castle Green they stopped allowing pets on the lawn.

The Thursday Social comes along, our drinking fest in the Castle Green Salon, but obviously I am not there. Leif is. He tweets, he just discovered Twitter, this: "It seems to me that booze could make anything happen socially. It's exciting but dangerous. Excedrin is also required, for the next morning." I picture him actually managing to flirt with Calley, the tall blond Pixar employee, though it's unlikely she noticed he was flirting, but still he managed to do it. He will have to build these skills as he has finally broken, under the weight of my mighty presence in our apartment. Think of Rain Man and Godzilla married. I am Godzilla. I make a mess of the Tokyo of my dollhouses and roar when Leif is watching TV.

Card Castle by parnellcorder.blogspot.com

Back at Missie's (I ran away to a friend's mother as my mother lives too far away), I have waited for the warmest part of the day in the little shack. I've used the weather app on my phone to determine that it's 52 degrees here at night. I strip off my clothes so dirty even I (Godzilla, but with a remnant of a little girl appearance) pull the shower lever, to let it reach a reasonable temperature before I step in. I have finally remembered to ask Missie for a towel. Unfortunately I have pulled the shower handle forward and backward and around, and there is no water emitting.

Tune in for more. Both here and in the Castle the story's still unfolding.