Last night about 8:30, someone knocked loudly on my door--BANG! BANG! BANG! When I checked, no one was at either door. So I called the police, and asked them if anyone else in the neighborhood has complained of such goings-on, and they said no. I asked them to check the neighborhood tonight, and they said they would.
So, about 4:30 this morning, something woke me. Of course, I had to get up and check all the doors and windows, drink coffee, etc.
I'll do something about it today. I don't know exactly what, but by the end of today, at least the motion-sensitive lights on the deck will be working, and any other outside lights that I or Dave M. can reach.
The doorbell rang and woke me about midnight, so I got up and checked the doors and windows. After an hour or so, I went back to sleep. It could have been the rain and wind that woke me just after 3:00 a.m. I notice one house across the street has four lights across the front, not Christmas lights. So maybe I'm not the only one being bothered.
Tomorrow--today--I'm going to take one of my burnt-out bulbs down, and go to Lowe's or somewhere and buy a bunch of them. I'll call Dave and make him come and install the new bulbs. I don't know if more lights will fix the problem, but maybe it will help. We should light up the whole neighborhood. My neighbor next door, in Jared's old house, has Christmas lights strung all around the roofs of his house and garage.
I've got 13 short-stories in my head and started in notebooks, so I plan to finish writing some of them this winter. That's how I fall asleep recently, working out one of these stories.
A. Oliver - Great Pyrenese - male 3 y.o. - Talladega, AL
Yesterday I made the rounds of post office, Walmart, and the Wiz's office where I finally got my problems resolved for the time-being. At Walmart, I found (praise God) that my four Rx refills cost nothing, and the fifth one hadn't been filled because Dr. G. hadn't called in a new prescription, so I'll have to make another trip. At the P.O., I mailed a handful of Christmas cards to the family and a couple of close friends.
Also mailed a complimentary copy of my poetry book to Mike, an old friend from our Huntsville days.
By the time I got home, it was nearly dark, and I like-to-didn't make it up the basement stairs. I ate my second meal of the day, than lay down and slept until 10:00 p.m. Then I watched a no-account French-language movie about two females who killed a whole family--with shotguns. At least they didn't set 'em on fire, which was their prior M.O.
I've been up since 3:15 a.m., walking around the house with the telephone in my hand, looking to see if I was awakened by a window breaking. Meanwhile I've drunk two mugs of coffee.
***
I've requested information about this dog, a lab mix. Have received no response about Fluffy or Bella.
I wish I could remember to take my camera when I leave the house. Copied these from the internet.
I'm beginning to be annoyed.
Last Saturday I went out on the deck to stand in the sunshine, and the neighborhood dogs were barking like crazy. There was a guy on my west-side neighbor's patio, in the shadows under their deck, so I couldn't see him well. Three dogs ran up to him barking, and he disappeared. I haven't seen a human around that house in several years, so I was afraid it was the neighbor himself, so I didn't call the police. That's about to change. If I must be harassed, they can be, too.
My neighbor down the street, a Mrs. Reese, phoned this morning and commiserated with me about the attempted break-in and police visit, the refugee situation, and other knotty problems. She said a neighbor up the street had called and told her about it; that was probably Dine (I forget her last name). So you see, I do know some of my neighbors' names. I had met Mrs. R. before, some five or ten years ago, when the postal person delivered some of my mail to her address, and she brought it to me.
She called me Joan, but that's all right. I answer to anything that starts with a Jo, except Johnson.
I don't have much ambition to write or blog any more, but I want to remember some details. The police posted a video on Facebook, supposedly in my neighborhood, supposedly showing a guy rather similar to the face/form that was on my porch, trying to break into a house and carrying something away. The police and I speculated that he might be someone who lives over on King's Forest or in that direction, because I didn't hear or see a car.
I didn't want to call Jed, because I knew he would cancel his vacation trip and rush over here. Which is what he did. He got a man to come and measure for the new windows, who called me back yesterday and said he'd install the new panes on Monday. Then Jed went back to Atlanta yesterday.
For so long I've had this half-scared, half-excited feeling that something was going to happen. So I got a burglar, and the world got the Paris disaster. I'm going to try to reverse the trend of waking at night and sleeping in the daytime. But I don't know if I can sleep in my bed by that window again.
I wish I felt as strong and normal as I felt this time last year. I would switch my bedroom and office furniture. Maybe Dave and Jennifer can do it over a period of time. All those books.
***
Oh, a cheerful note: I found this adorable dog on FCDF, his name is "Fluffy Puppy." He's a mix of bulldog and Rottweiler. I emailed the person who advertised him but haven't heard back.
Well, at least it wasn't a ghost. I'm shaking so that my fingers are typing by themselves, more accurately than I usually type.
I went to sleep on the sofa, then woke up later and thought my back door was open. It wasn't. I just looked around, made sure all the doors were locked and the front and back porch lights on, and lay back down on the sofa. About 4:15 a.m., something went CRASH! and shook the east side of the house. I woke up and thought, now, did I dream that, or--KER-BLAM!
Something definitely hit the house again. I jumped up and grabbed the phone, but couldn't see it well enough to dial. I ran to look out the kitchen window, and a guy was on the deck. He shone a flashlight through the window, and the back porch light went out. I finally got 911 on the phone and told them someone was breaking in.
Well, that's all the excitement except for my little shaky legs trying to hold me up. The police car arrived about five minutes later, and two policemen rang the doorbell. They asked me to describe the man. About all I saw was his face and the flashlight, but I told them he was medium height, 20's or 30's of age, and African American. I wish he had been white, but he wasn't.
They looked all around the house. I told them I thought the banging had been on the garage door. They said the door into the side of the garage was muddy, as if someone had been kicking it. The back porch light wasn't broken, but the bulb was unscrewed.
I'm almost grateful to the guy for being real. All the strange noises I've heard around this house have made me wonder if I was losing my mind.
The policemen left, saying they would cruise around the neighborhood until daylight, and that if I heard anything else to call 911 again. And that I had a very clean house. I said thanks.
I guess it doesn't happen when Jed's here, because his car would be parked in the driveway.
Jed came over yesterday. He's going to NYC Thursday to visit friends, so he went home early this afternoon.
My sweet baby sister brought me chicken and vegetables for my dinner, and a brownie for dessert. I went to bed early, about 10:15 p.m., so I could get up and be at the dentist's office at 9:00.
Well, I must be back to normal. I've spent a couple of hours this morning hunting for Halloween stuff, with very little luck. I guess I'll be forced to go to the basement.
Tomorrow's the day we host the Birmingham Arts Journal. I've been sitting here trying not to think of all the stuff I've got to do, till all of a sudden I think I can cope. I can put a lot of it off until the last minute, meanwhile doing all the little stuff that I can do at home.
My favorite season of the year, and I haven't been out of the house since Saturday. I hope my car will start. "I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."
It saves a lot of twisting and turning.
Jennifer cleaned up the house yesterday, and I got Dave to fix a couple of things that I'm too "feeble" to handle. I gave him a handful of quarters and sent him to the laundromat with my velvet bedspread, dry weight nine pounds avoirdupois. He also repositioned my shower rod and hung my new shower curtain.
Sometimes, when you've got something tiresome or difficult to do, you tell yourself, "I've dealt with worse than this before." Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
We couldn't get on the bridge. And one thing our cameras didn't really show off: As well as "undergrowth," there were big trees growing on the bridge, and a couple had fallen off the edge and hung by their roots upside down. This one shows a smaller tree hanging down.
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| The Natural Bridge(s) |
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| Me and the Indian Rock |
I've done several of them today: laundry, grocery shopping, calling in Rx refill requests, paying a few stray bills before the new ones start coming in.
#1. Woke up with turmoil of the tummy.
#2. Because of #1, I missed going to church and lunch with my sisters.
#3. Of course, today is rainy and overcast. What eclipse?
ON THE OTHER HAND:
#1. I dreamed I made a fountain in the back yard for Jack and Jed (little fellows). And all three of us were playing in it.
The Exchange Club truck came by this morning, and two nice guys who toted my old mammoth vacuum cleaner, with all the attachments and a nearly new package of bags, out to the truck. I can brag about the donation, because I don't really think it's a charitable act, when somewhere in there, money is going to change hands. And I can brag, because I've freed up so many cubic feet of storage space and saved myself sore arms, back, neck, etc. Danged clumsy piece of expensive junk. I'll just buy myself a Shark when I get around to it with a little dough saved up.
I tried (and failed, of course) to give up my "three cigarettes a day" for Yom Kippur. A true case of willing spirit and weak flesh.
Well, I'm off to a good start. Am on page 2 of the novel, or novella, or long short story, or whatever it turns out to be. I started off wondering what would have happened, if I had succeeded in persuading Lawyer Cage to buy that Queen Anne-style house in Forest Park for ten thousand bucks. We probably could have got it for seventy-five hundred.
