There’s been a terrible mistake. I’m supposed to be living in a cottage surrounded by flowers. It’s as plain as day, right on my office wall.
Remember Richard Dreyfuss’ character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? He obsessively builds his mound/mountain without really knowing why, until that eureka moment when he finds it in real life.
I like to think my cottage obsession is like that. That someday I’ll be moseying along, minding my own business, and come upon my dream cottage…for sale…cheap… and Mike and I will buy it and live out our days there. (OK, honey?) 
It could happen, right? I’ve read many articles in my home & garden magazines that begin, “Well we weren’t even LOOKING for a house, but we came around the corner and there it was. We had to have it (even though we had to sell our current house, quit our jobs, move 3 states away, and spend $100K renovating it).”
It could happen, right? 
Yeah, right.
But I can envision it anyway — the chair here, table there, tiled fireplace, gardens all around. 
In the meantime, like Richard, I keep trying to create my dream right where I am.
It’s not so bad, really.
There are 
more far-fetched futures to dream about. (That place on the beach, for example.)
But on a day as glorious as this one — clear, sunny, just warm enough — even cottages in the air seem not only possible, but probable. I’ll just stumble onto it.
I have never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness,
as that one which I have had always,
that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
~ Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666
Writing by Ear 
