I am woken up this morning by loud winds outside my apartment. I get up to go to the bathroom, stumbling in still half-asleep.

When I get there, I’m flummoxed by something I’m not expecting — the toilet is missing. The carpeting extends to the wall as if it’s perfectly natural to have a small room with a sink, a mirror, some cabinetry, and no toilet.

I lean against the sink, wondering, “What the hell? Someone broke in, stole my toilet, and recarpeted my bathroom? Since 2 AM?” This strikes me as somewhat farfetched. I am still pretty confused when….

I am woken up by loud winds outside my apartment. I realize, “Oh, that explains it. I was still sleeping before.” I get up to go to the bathroom, which is now completely empty; apparently my apartment now comes equipped with a walk-in closet.

At this point, I’m pretty bemused, but distracted by the problem that I really need to use a bathroom.

Next thing I know, I am woken up by loud winds outside my apartment. I look around my bedroom, establishing that this time I feel really awake. I enter the bathroom with some trepidation, and huzzah! the toilet is in its rightful position. Then I notice the mirror is gone.

So I’m staring at the newly blank wall, thinking that I now have a conundrum. Four cups of coffee are insisting that it’s time to leave my bladder. The toilet is right there. And despite the fact that I am now upright and walking around my apartment, the missing mirror is telling me that, in fact, I am most likely still in bed on a windy day with four cups of coffee insistently wanting to leave my bladder.

In short, going to the bathroom right now strikes me as a very bad idea.

At this point my memory becomes pretty fuzzy — there’s something about being at a wedding and staying in room 301 of a hotel, none of which involves bathrooms. This is all normal dreaming without the lucid sensation of being awake and controlling my actions. When I wake up again, I head to the bathroom and find it all astonishingly and thankfully normal.

I also notice something I missed all morning: the bathroom that had been vexing me wasn’t my bathroom. The layout was entirely wrong. Somehow I managed to miss that detail.

It would be nice to say at the end that this has been a creative writing exercise, but I’m not that creative. Sadly, this is a true story.