My Dream House, as of this moment

I have a picture in my head of how I might be living in ten years. I see myself in Chicago, living in a tiny but adequate one-bedroom apartment with my dog Cerberus (I've never owned one or had a favorite breed so I can't be more specific on this point). I'm wearing a Chicago Bears beanie and my downy black winter coat, my hands stuffed in my pockets because I forgot to grab my mittens (again); I hurriedly stomp through the city to get to catch my train. I love my job but it leaves me little time for myself, but it's okay as long as I can afford "me time" and artisan cheese.

My Dream House bears very little resemblance to my imagined future. After watching the complete The Lord of the Rings trilogy and reading The Hobbit I've decided I want to live like a hobbit, in something akin to a hobbit hole. It'd be warm in the winter and tolerable in the summer, but I won't be indoors much that time of year anyway. I'm not terribly fond of the doorknob located in the center of the door, but I suppose I could live with it as long as all the interior doors were typically placed. I want my bedroom to face the east, so that I wake up to the sunrise. My living room should face southwest or northwest so I can enjoy both the sunset and the warm evening fire kindling in my fireplace. I will have two whole walls devoted to two enormous bookshelves, with one of those library ladders that can roll across both walls-- not that my ceilings will be very high but I'm short so the ladders would be necessary. And fun. Outside I will have a pear orchard and vegetable garden and flowers for every window. I don't exactly have a green thumb, but I don't have the opposite of that (a red thumb?) so I'll acquire my own Samwise Gamgee to be my gardener and companion. Oh, and I'll harvest sunshine, too ;I want a field of solar panels to give me enough power to live off the grid. All things considered I think this part of my Dream House is the most unrealistic -- I can't really harvest that much solar power if I don't live in a place that is perpetually sunny-- but it's fun to pretend that all this is feasible and mine. Hopefully I'll find some happy medium between these two imagined scenarios.

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