Sleeping

I have always loved sleeping with all of the windows wide open.  I just love the cool night air.  And I generally don't have too much of a problem sleeping -- since going to the chiropractor to get my neck fixed.  Also, my wonderful Brother In Law, Larry, told me about Melatonin.  We take 3mg every night and it really takes the edge off and helps me feel like I want to sleep.  Thanks for that tip, Larry!

But lately my headaches have started to think about returning.  Sigh...

But even more than that, last Tuesday night was trash night.  That's the night where you go through the house emptying all of the trash.  Then you lug the garbage can out to the street for the early Wednesday morning pickup.  Simple enough....

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning every single dog in the neighborhood was barking.  While my deaf ear is a curse in some circumstances, it's a blessing in others.  I simply roll over and I can't hear most things.  But this night the barking was so intense that it traveled through my pillow and into my good ear and it went on all night.  Our dogs were also on alert and started this little popping noise they make that is a pre-cursor to a full blown bark-fest.  Then it was on.  They joined the noisy chorus.

We knew a bear was outside.  We heard the trash can being knocked over.  We sighed as we thought of the mess that was taking place.

We didn't sleep at all that night.

The next morning as I took the girls outside -- sure enough, there was a mess at the end of the driveway.  The trash collector, bless his heart, had picked up most of the mess.  But there were still wrappers and empty yogurt cups strewn all over -- not to mention the shredded paper from my office.  It looked like it had snowed.

Our neighbor told us that she saw a huge bear rummaging through our garbage.  She said the bear was so big he couldn't even fit into the can.  She yelled at him and he lumbered up our driveway and through our back yard.  Fortunately, he didn't find my heirloom tomatoes to his liking and left them all for me.

Oddly enough, there is probably a bigger bear problem here in town than there will be up on our mountain.  We don't intend to keep trash outside up there.  There are bear-proof trash containers at the bottom of our canyon and our trash will be kept there.  I hope to have chickens and a garden up there, so there might be a little threat from wild critters, but for the most part I don't think we'll have any problems.

But back to sleeping... Wednesday night Les came home from our friend Jeff's house with some sort of stomach bug.  He was up and down all night, but felt much better last night.  Then sleeping last night --- like a baby!