Last night I dreamt I had a daughter named Cunning, around toddler age…and another, a baby girl whose name I didn’t quite catch. Or couldn’t pronounce. But definitely can’t remember. The little man had grown. He was much taller (taller I am now, which isn’t saying much) and was quite capable of caring for himself…and temporarily looking after the girls. He waited in the car with his sisters (my ‘97 VW Jetta that was totalled in the summer of ‘99) while I popped in to return some books to the local library. Only it was the library in the town I grew up in. A town I don’t ever plan to reside in again. I’m not sure what this dream was trying to tell me, if anything, but there was a bit of synchronicity when I woke up this morning. One of the first things I read was a weblog, found via the StrikeBlog, documenting a fellow traveler’s walk to work. I enjoyed the entire entry, and couldn’t agree more with his positions regarding the strike, but the below passage grabbed me in a tangential sort of way:
7:58 am — Pausing at the corner of 24th and Harriet, I look up the street toward my old apartment.I’ve recently discovered that this part of Minneapolis is the old basin for Lake Blaisdell, which was part of the Minneapolis chain of lakes until it was filled in to make room for the city’s expansion, oh, about 1890. I’ll be looking into that!
So that explains it! Back in 1999, I occupied an apartment in that very neighborhood. The weekend before I was to move into my house, (while eight months pregnant with the little man, mind you) my neighborhood was hit by a crazy summer storm, replete with flash flooding. I recall getting home late that night…after a midnight movie, but before the rains started. I congratulated myself on scoring a rare parking spot right outside my apartment building’s front door. Usually when getting home that late I’d have to park a couple blocks away, up a hill. After walking outside the next morning I wished I’d had to park up that hill after all. The gutters were overflowing and the sidewalks covered with slick muck. Looking up and down my street (Garfield Avenue) I noticed that the cars were all askew, many with hoods and/or trunks popped open. The sheer force of the massive amount of water pouring into the area had shifted all the lightweight cars about, but my ‘97 VW Jetta had been heavy enough to hold its own. I’d cautiously approached it and opened the driver side door…to find that it had been flooded up to the dashboard. Thankfully I had decent car insurance, but I still had several weeks of hassle to deal with at the most inopportune of times. But now, thanks to 5 o’clock bot, I know why all that water had pooled in my neighborhood…the basin wanted its lake back.
