Chickadee Manor

The one where things did not go according to plan...

So, remember how yesterday I said today was going to be THE day to tackle the exterior side of the windows?  Yeah, well, that didn't happen.  Not even close.  It seems I have been slammed with some sort of virus.  I was feeling slightly iffy on Wednesday but thought it was just due to my being on antibiotics for an extended period of time due to a sinus infection.  Apparently not.  Last night was not good and today I spent almost the entire day in bed or on the couch in the living room, only getting up to help when things could only be done safely by me and otherwise enlisting the help of my eldest two kiddos to help reach things, pour milk, etc., for the littlest ones.  Thankfully, Dwayne was home over lunch and went to the grocery store (twice!) today to pick up what we needed and took over in the meals department.  Judah actually napped on top of me on the couch this afternoon and we all took turns choosing cartoons and HGTV shows to watch while he snoozed and the rest of us took it easy.  I am optomistically saying that I am trending upward but that is also how I felt on Wednesday night.  We shall see in the morning!  Those windows will just have to wait.  Or perhaps I will have to try cleaning them with winter windshield washing solution...has anyone out there tried that? 

I will leave you with some silly selfies that I took with the kids when we got out to the hunting cabin last weekend.  Everyone was glad to be out of the vehicles after two and a half hours or so of driving and more than happy to goof off for the camera! :)

 

Big Chicken

That would be me. I really don't like going outside at dusk by myself. I have a very over active imagination at times, and the darker it gets outside, the more vivid my imagination becomes. Tonight I needed to hang Dwayne's work clothes outside on the line so they would be dry for him in the morning. I turned on the outside light, I turned off the generator (in case I needed to yell for whatever reason and needed someone to hear!), and then I pegged the clothes on the line as quickly as I could whilst ringing a small cow bell I had hung on the line. I didn't want to be surprising bears or cougars while I was on own my own outside and Dwayne and the kids were sleeping soundly inside. The neighbourhood dogs were howling and barking from several directions and I wasn't sure if they were barking because of me or because of something else they could smell on the wind or hear in the distance. Last night there was all manner of howling in the middle of the night but I couldn't discern if it was dogs or wolves. There was also a horrible shriek that I couldn't peg to any particular animal. All of these things, combined with my ridiculously over active imagination meant I had a slight adrenaline rush for those few minutes. Of course nothing happened to me, nor did I see anything peering at me from the forest. At dusk the noises of the night are amplified and it is easier to imagine that things are different than they are in the light.

This is not something exclusive to the outdoors for me. I don't dare read a suspenseful book right before I go to sleep or watch an intense movie alone. Elements of the story seem to become real, and enough so that I don't want to stir from my bed or couch. After watching "Hannibal" alone while attending university, I had to go through my entire apartment room by room, closet by closet, even though logic was telling me that I had been locked in during the entire movie and entirely alone as well. It is hard to shut down my imagination at night. Thankfully I don't often have nightmares, and they never seem to be about suspenseful things I have read or watched but about mundane or normal things gone awry. Somehow in my dreamland I am better able to switch between logic and imagination and reason with myself in sleep saying, "This isn't real." That can either halt my dream entirely or allow me to follow the dream to whatever conclusion it might have without any sense of fear.

Maybe it has something to do with being tired as well. Maybe it's like when toddlers are overtired and instead of sleeping they just keep moving faster and faster and get more and more hyper. Maybe my brain just can't slow itself down when it is tired either. Either that or I'm just a big chicken.