Morning, all!
We slept in our new bed last night for the first time. Twiggy has deemed it to be acceptable.
The bed is a king, and somehow he still ended up sleeping on top of me, so I have no idea how the mattress is.
I've mentioned before that I walk the dogs obscenely early. Normally, our street is very quiet and there's usually no traffic (because who in their right mind would willingly be awake at 4am?). When there is a fellow crazy, we get off the road, and everyone goes on their merry way. This morning, a truck I had never seen before drove past me. Slowly. Then it turned around and drove back towards me. My first honest thought was, "I'm about to get shot for being that creeper." You can't miss us, we have reflective collars and leashes, an atomic flashlight, and I have this ridiculous reflective orange floppy hat I wear. The truck slowed to a stop and a guy asked if I was okay. I told him yes, I'm just walking my dogs (cue Twiggy going banana sandwich). He said ok, kind of skeptically, and drove off.
So that was unsettling because it's never happened before, but I understand why he stopped. I'm walking down a dark street, alone, in the dark, at an ungodly hour. *I'm* the creeper in this story. Or I'm in trouble. Well prepared, with my flashlight and reflective hat, but in trouble.
But what was weird was, the strange truck didn't turn around and pass me a third time, like I expected if he was back to going where he was originally headed. I got to the stop sign about ten minutes later, and the same truck is just cruising down a side street, reeeeeally slowly, like someone canvassing a neighborhood (I promise I'm truly not this paranoid, but it's 4am, and all of this is so so so weird). Well, the dogs and I beat feet home, and I tried so very hard not to think, "This is how horror movies start." The coyotes howling in the distance and the weird silence--not even a cricket, or an owl this morning, very strange--only kicked my imagination into overdrive.
And then I hit a giant possum on my way in.
"And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me..."
--Philip Pullman