Insomnia

I guess being awake at 10:45 at night isn't *really* insomnia, but Rhonda conked out an hour ago, and I am left feeling wide awake while I should be sleeping. We have been working hard in preparation for Rhonda's departure: she heads to Lancaster tomorrow to help her dad build a shed. (For effect, and because I love exaggeration, I told a friend she was going home to build a barn. Lancaster, PA + barn raising invokes iconic images of Amish barn raising...) But really, its just a shed.

So, since she will be gone from the homestead for a week, we have been gardening, prepping our 3rd bedroom for painting, planning our radical lawn transformation (more on this in a future post), and generally working hard. I am theoretically exhausted, but sleep is elusive.

I'm sure I will be writing much more in the next week as Buddy and I sit and stare at each other in this big old farmhouse. In the meantime, I have some photos I have been meaning to post.





Buddy stares at me while I talk on the phone to Gaby.





Oyster mushrooms we are growing in our kitchen.







Inside the mushroom farm.

Tall grass against our garage.

Spirit World

I had insomnia last night. I woke up from a sound sleep at 3:46 and could not get back to sleep. So I decided to get up for a while. I noticed from the bathroom window that it had snowed during the night, and I wanted a better look. I headed to the front door and turned on our outside light, a perspective from which I could see the it was still snowing; everything looked soft around the edges in the outside world.

I was standing in my bathrobe, staring in a half-daze, when I saw a large creature walk lithely down our driveway and take a turn onto the sidewalk. By the time she had begun her trot up the walkway I could tell it was a cat: a large, gray, well-fed cat. She walked right up our front steps and stopped to cast a look directly at me. We stared at each other for a while until she leaped off of the stairs and into the bushes.

I tracked the cat's path and headed towards our back door just in time to see her run through the yard towards one of our big pines. I quickly pulled on my blue, polka-dotted rain boots and went outside in order to find her. i was thinking that no cat should be outside in the snow.

I stood in the yard for a while in my bathrobe and blue rubber boots while snow gently fell on my shoulders. I quietly called pss-pss-pss and nch-nch-nch to try to call her out from her hiding place. The world held the quiet of a snowstorm at 4am; there was no sign of my gray, feline friend. It suddenly occurred to me that I may have entirely imagined this creature into existence, or that she was an other-worldy cat called to send me a message.

The feeling was haunting and beautiful.

I decided to go inside and read Banana Yoshimoto until I could fall back to sleep.

sleepy peoples

I woke up this morning at 4:40 when I thought I heard the flapping of furious wings over my head. It turns out that it was a dream -- just a grand finale to a night of strange restlessness. It doesn't help that I was sleeping in between two of the warmest beings known to the planet earth. The heat generating unit known as Buddy is generally not allowed in the bed. However, when you are sleeping on a futon on the living room floor, there is little you can do to prevent little dogs from snuggling up to you in the dark of the night. Buddy is clever in that he waits until we are both fully asleep, and then he moves from his little doggy bed (made of corduroy and cheap filler) to our bed (lined with nice, soft, cotton sheets and a down comforter).This habit of mid-night migration has lead to many a confused morning in which we are all slightly rearranged. Yesterday morning, Rhonda sat up, looked around, and said "where's Buddy?" with genuine perplexity. Then, as if called forth by magic, a very rumpled looking dog-face emerged from directly between our heads. We had been so asleep and comfortable that we didn't notice that Buddy had wedged himself directly between us in the middle of the night. Good thing I didn't roll over -- he would have been one smashed dog-pancake.