For a few years now, I’ve been dreaming about a house. The same house, time after time. It’s not a house I know in the waking world, it bears no similarity to anywhere I’ve ever been. The closest place I could name to describe it would be the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Or the house that Hugh Crane built.

But it’s a solid, real place — at least, in my dreams. After so long, I’m starting to get to know the layout and furnishings of the place pretty well.

At least, that’s what I thought. Until last night…

Turns out, in my dreams, we’ve bought the house. Even though it’s impossibly huge and far more than our family would ever need. Even though it’s the kind of place that you wouldn’t ever really want to live in (unless you were me, apparently).

And, last night, I got to see more of the house than I ever had before. Ever new room and area was amazing — ornate bedrooms and parlors, crumbling basements and grottoes… And all sorts of strange things living there, undisturbed through the years. Until now. Until us.

(“We took a wrong turn and ended up down in a basement with crumbling brick walls and tunnels full of rats. They were white and brown and pink, all fleeing up the tunnels afraid of us.” I made little squeaking noises to demonstrate for my wife. She’d been very patiently listening to me ramble on about the dream house this morning when, really, it was way too early for that sort of thing.

“Neapolitan rats,” my wife observed, sipping her tea.

I don’t deserve her.)

We’re moving in a couple of weeks, of course. Our current place is starting to fill up with boxes and everything is jumbled around edges. At this point, the wait is starting to get annoying and we’re all looking forward to finally getting into the new house.

But I’m kind of interested to see how we’re settling in to our other new house, next time I dream of it…