The last couple of nights, when I’ve finally gone to sleep and not been wakened by my neighbors or my pacing dog, I’ve had some uber-random and somewhat goofy dreams.

Like standing on a foggy bricky street corner with a handful of dream-friends (people I’ve never met in waking life) and showing them the really wild cookies I’d just baked.  They were, from what I could discern, a sugar cookie of sorts, that had lavender and chamomile baked in.  And then they were frosted with neon-pink icing, which was all spiky and made the cookies look like very retro and aggressive hedgehogs.  The friends who I was showing them to were kind of scared of them.  They were also, randomly, British.  The scenery and the people around us were off-kilter somehow in a way that I still can’t quite put my finger on.  But I remember feeling (and stating out loud to my cookie-fearing pals) that I felt like I was in a Neil Gaiman novel…and none of them denied that I was, indeed.  It was one of those flash dream moments.  Just that one moment, where I took in everything around me and what was going on, and then it changed.  Or I woke up.

Then, I woke up in the middle of the night, Monday, after a “stress dream” that Mardi Gras had come and gone, and that I had missed it.  That was it.  No visionary detail, no imagery that lingered afterwards.  Just the experience of coming back into consciousness with the dream knowledge of “Oh CRAP.  I MISSED MARDI GRAS!”  Then I fully returned to myself and figured out what day it was, and it was all good.  But seriously, what a thing to panic about.

This might have something to do with the fact that I am actually uncertain as to what sort of festivities I’ll be up to for the holiday this year.  It’s kind of up in the air.  I’m particular about the holiday, especially out here in this part of the country.  Most public venues and some private events just miss the point, or they don’t capture the right vibe.  We pulled off an awesome one last year, amongst a small faction of ourselves.  So, we’ll see what happens.

I always get particularly NOLA-piney during the Mardi Gras season.  It makes me just want to Be There.  I think I was either 3 or 4 years old, the last time I “experienced” it in New Orleans, proper.  I still remember some of the throws from back then, my favorite, at that age, being the plastic oreo cookie pendant with a bite taken out of it, on a stretchy bright green cord.  After we moved to Texas, as a kid my favorite things to play with were my parents’ collection of beads and doubloons.  And we’re talking older-school beads, here, the clear colored ones with the plastic snap clasp.  I wish I still had those old beads.  However, I have been carrying the doubloons around with me ever since.  They survived a move to New Mexico, and then the move to Colorado.  I’ve no doubt they’ll survive the trip home again.  My ultimate goals are to someday have a Zulu Coconut and a Muses Shoe to keep them company.  A girl can dream, right?

Amusingly, and also concerningly, J and I will be beginning our job hunts within the next couple of weeks, right in the middle of Mardi Gras season.  I wonder how wise that is…whether anything will come out of a search during that timeframe, considering the festivity down there.  We’re gonna start it anyway.  The notion of it amuses me more than I find it worrisome.  I’m just ready to go, though.  I’ve been alternating between patience and impatience for three years.  We’re so close, now it’s time to stick our necks out and work for it and make it happen.

I’m ready for new places, new things, new culture, new weather, a new home, new plants to learn about, new nature to breathe in, new acquaintances, eventually new friends, at least new faces…and for time to focus on myself, to paint and write and be what I’ve always wanted to be but could never *quite* be, here, to garden and make herbally neat things, to pursue my spiritual path…I could go on.  Sometimes I feel, too, like I’m just wanting to get away from some things.  History, mainly.  I don’t view it as “running away” necessarily, so much as just desiring a start-over, a new path.  I have been in Colorado since the winter of 1999.  That’s a long time to create histories.  Sometimes you just need to uproot, and sometimes that need is nearly claustrophobic.

*sigh*  I’m just…ready.

We’re getting there though.  We’ve both been slowly extricating ourselves from what used to be our yearly routines.  Now, I feel like a tiger, pacing around a too-small cage, while I sit (im)patiently waiting for my W2, so that we can do our taxes and see the last of the fundage with our own eyes.  And then we begin.