As the sun started to set this evening and the frogs began croaking in the pond on the back half of our property, the realization that I’m all alone out here is starting to get real.
I dropped Josh off in the wee hours this morning to catch the SEA-TAC shuttle for his flight to Dallas where he’ll work this week. Today wasn’t bad. I got to work, I even unpacked some boxes and got our house a tad closer to looking like someone lives here. But now, as the darkness sets in I have to admit the fraidy-cat in me is surfacing.
I really do enjoy the peace and the quiet. I can’t hear I-30 roaring behind me, the buzzing sounds of street lights or sirens roaring down Garland road. The first couple of weeks settling into our new place, I welcomed this silence, but right now, I could use a siren or two.
Other than the frogs there are some noises, but I haven’t gotten used to them. For example, there is some sort of moaning noise under the refrigerator. My mother-in-law heard it while she was here and convinced me that it was probably noise from a water pipe underneath. Yes, water. Water also creates a little anxiety as the water filtering system is located in the garage, just on the other side of the wall in our bedroom. It sounds a lot like the garage door opening, and even though I purposely opened and closed the garage door to get used to the sound, I STILL can’t tell the difference. But I’ll tell myself that the noise is the filter.
It’s really late, and since I’m working Central Time hours, I don’t have time for restless sleeping so I’m going to have to get a handle on this. Sure I have Moonpie and the Lady Labs, so I’m not completely alone, but even their barking at the darkness here and there isn’t helping. Seriously, is something really out there? And if there is, I really don’t want to know about it. I know there are animals, and nothing harmful a herd of deer, a few million bunny rabbits and probably a racoon or two.
Yes, I’ll just think of the animals. It’s like a Disney movie right? Bambi curling up with his mother and Thumper burrowing in somewhere for the night. But Daisy begins her cryptic growling out the back door again and my idyllic bedtime Disney story becomes something a little less cuddly.
So now I’ll do the only thing a sensible person who has recently moved to the middle of freakin’ nowhere would do. I’ll drag all the dog beds into our bedroom, strategically place them at the foot of the bed in a semi-circle so that there is one dog for each door and window. I’ll shut the door so Daisy will stop barking at any random flicker out the window. I’m now safely barricaded in my room. And the water filter begins rumbling and Daisy begins to growl.
It’s not the garage door, it’s not the garage door……..
Yep, this might be a long week. For all of us.
This morning I woke up and picked four quarts of wild blackberries growing in our front yard. They’ve just started coming ripe enough to pick and after my jam making class with Slow Food Whidbey Island, I thought I’d give my first batch a try.
d, I was amazed at how much sugar one batch of jam takes. I know there are recipes with less sugar, but I thought I’d start with the basics and then experiment once I got the process down. For this batch, I decided to strain out the seeds for half of the berry puree. I wanted seeds for texture and for show, but I wanted the sweetness of the blackberries to come through.
life in the sound 