Nineteen

Day of ups and downs. Slept better: asleep before 11:30 and only woke up once in the night at quarter past one...and it was just as well because as I was settling back into the covers Youngest woke up shrieking with a nightmare. After soothing her I reflected on how much better that went than it would have if I'd been drinking because either I would have been out so cold I slept through it or would have been up but very cranky. 

Slept straight through till five, dozed back off and was up for the day at 6 which turned out to be nice because an amazing thing happened at 6:13. I took the dog out and while he was on his leash a tiny fawn emerged from a clump of grass at the edge of our yard, trotted right over to him and put its nose not six inches from his. No fear at all, just curiosity. I was on the other end of the leash not 6 feet away and I think it was the closest I've been to a deer in the wild of any size or shape and this one wasn't even a full eight inches taller than our beagle. It was amazing.

Of course a moment later Mama Deer came 'round the side of the house not at ALL happy with the situation--she stomped in front of the dog, splayed her front feet in a tripod, got her head down, her tail up and hissed while Baby scampered off along the fenceline to the woods at the edge of the property. I didn't know deer could even make that sound. Our dog backed up, clearly intimidated (he's a lover not a fighter) and started growling but since he was done with his morning micturition I got him back in the house super-quick.  I doubt we'll see that mama and baby again any time soon and it was so early in the morning and over so quickly as to have a dreamlike quality at the edges but the grass stayed pushed down where the fawn had slept so it was real for sure. Also quite special.

Too bad I ended up being totally cranky and out of sorts the whole rest of the day anyhow. Had to make a trip to my least favorite branch site and that always puts me in a bad mood but I was already there from the git-go.  Headachy, tired, whiny but mostly angry at the world for no particular reason. Stayed that way the whole day, too.  When I got home I gave myself permission to eat All The Carbs like whatever day it was last week when the same thing happened and that helped enough for me to be civil to the family and get the Absolute Evening Necessities (dinner and the lunches for tomorrow) done without having a meltdown.

It may be an illness I'm fighting off: Youngest was asleep on the couch when I got home, woke around 7 only long enough to eat some dinner and sneeze a few times then announced she was "really tired and going to bed" a little before eight. This would be the third or fourth day she's been sneezy; I'd been writing it off to seasonal allergies but maybe not. In any case I'm putting myself to bed super-early too...just got word that the family at Chaos South are back to routine drinking and since they're coming back here from Saturday to Wednesday I need to get my own ducks in a row, have my tools and coping mechanisms all nice and ready and be well rested so that I'm not tempted. 

And so it goes. Tomorrow makes 20 and Friday is three weeks and Monday will be Day 24 which now that I've counted out I'm holding onto tightly.