Weirdest Night Ever

I swear last night was the weirdest night ever. Things kept happening, one after the other, and I ended up getting all of three hours of sleep.

Oh, nothing hugely major, just a series of oddities.

It all started around 10pm.

First, Tootsie wouldn't finish her canned dog food. Our totally food-motivated, piggy of a dog, who has never turned down any sort of food, wouldn't finish the yummy canned food. You know, the stuff we use to give her the heartworm treatment. Great. I have to use my puppy persuasion powers to convince her to finish it. That really should have been my first sign.

Next, we had bad storms, and about as soon as the rain starts I see a loud flash at the same time I hear a boom and am pretty sure one of our trees got hit by lightening. But it's really dark out. I don't see any fire, so... guess we'll wait till morning to see.

Then, Tucker comes running in from the laundry room with a mouse (he's become quite the good mouser). It's still alive. I tell him to go to his room, because I don't want him letting a live mouse out on the floor of the house. He doesn't (I guess I should explain that normally he will go in "his" room [the spare room - where he's fed & the litter box is] if he's told). I proceed to chase him around the house for 5 - 10 minutes, with a mouse in his mouth, until I finally get him in his room.

The noises that proceeded out of that room were... interesting. The sound of my cat howling, screeching, as things are being knocked over. It seems the mouse might be fighting back.
I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of that little mouse getting in a good bite or two. And in case you haven't had the pleasure... a mouse bite hurts. Like the dickens. Don't let their size fool ya.

But I figured Tucker could handle himself with a little mouse, so left them alone, and the noises quieted down, and in no time he was crying to be let out of the room.

After he comes out, I go in to survey the damage, and there's the little mousie. Poor thing. I use a sock to pick it up by it's tail and put it in a cardboard box before throwing it outside. As I'm carrying it out, it strikes me that it's a female. And seems to be more the type of mouse that you buy as a pet than you find in the wild. Which I find interesting.

And right now I'm chuckling a little on the inside because some of you are probably wondering how in the world I can tell it's a female, or how I must be crazy because all mice are the same, right? ha! Little known facts about Jodi... perhaps I shall write a follow-up post.

Anywho... in the course of the night I also killed three wolf spiders. Which is less weird than it used to be, but I still don't like and the sight of them still makes my heart jump. Mostly because they have this freaky habit of showing up out of nowhere.

So... in the midst of all this I'm doing chores: laundry, dishes, etc.

A little bit later I finish folding a basket of clothes, which I do on the living room floor, and pull myself up on the couch. And then I feel something crawling on me. I look down to see... a TICK! An actual tick!
Of course, my initial reaction is to flick it off, which I do. So then I have to search the couch to find it. Which I did (thank God!). I picked it up with tweezers and put it in the sink, unsure of what to do next. I couldn't find the bug spray, and I just remembered being told they were really hard to kill. So I took a knife & cut it in half. Because you needed that visual, didn't you?

By this time it's nearly 1am, so I put in one final load of laundry and go to check on Jena.

She's fallen out of her bed.

That child has never fallen out  / off of any sleeping surface. She has slept in our bed, on various couches, etc. Last night? I found her on the floor. I go to pick her up, and she is soaked. And I mean, soaked.

The kid who for a couple months has been waking up with dry diapers, and whose diaper I changed in her bed before tucking her in last night, has peed thru her diaper, soaked her pajama pants & top (don't ask me how), and the comforter. I'm guessing the comforter must've somehow gotten underneath her, because her sheets where actually dry.

So I pick her up & put her back in bed, go get a new diaper, and some clean pj's, and come back in to completely change her. She sleeps thru the diaper change, but half-wakes up during the pj change and is not happy about it. But we manage. I fold her comforter so the dry side is up, and place it on the floor next to her bed, just in case, and go get a throw from the hall closet. She falls back to sleep almost instantly.

I finally get ready for bed, and crawl into bed around 1:45pm.

But... around 2:30am I'm awakened by the sound of all three dogs barking madly. And Buddy's bark is not friendly. I sit and listen. Usually this means a strange dog, or a deer, or whatever. Although it is a bit odd that they're all barking. And moving. Thru the yard. And not stopping.

I finally get up and look out our bedroom window.

There's a pickup truck in our yard!

Somebody has just driven right past mine (and Jena's) bedroom windows and is now driving thru our backyard!

What do I do? Jason is working, I'm home alone with a toddler, and someone is blatantly driving onto our property! Do I confront them? Call the cops? Call Jason?

I should have called the police. That would have been the smart thing. I have the direct line to dispatch saved in my cell phone, so I wouldn't even have to call 9-1-1. So that really would have been the smart thing.

But it's 2:30 in the morning, and I'm half asleep. So I'm brilliant enough to put on my shoes, put my cell phone in my pocket, and head out to confront whomever it is, who has now stopped, about an acre back, gotten out of their truck and is shining a flashlight deep into our acreage.

I "call" the dogs as soon as I get outside. I make a quiet clucking sound and they come running. Good dogs.

And then... the guy decides to turn on the flashing yellow lights and LED tail lights installed on his truck.

It's the freakin' electric company.

In the darkness I couldn't see the lights mounted on top, or the signage all over the truck. All I could see was a pickup truck driving thru our property.

Buddy still isn't happy, but now he's probably feeding some off of my tension / anxiety. He growls at the worker, and jumps on him as he approaches me, knocking the flashlight from his hand. I call Buddy back to me and hold him by his collar.

The worker explains that we have a transformer in the middle of our property that got struck by lightening (remember from earlier... aha!). He said "maybe" he should have called or knocked on the front door, but he was hoping to fix it and be gone before anyone knew he was there.

I muttered something about leaving him to do his job, and walked back to the house, with all three dogs in tow. I told them to "stay" on the back porch before going inside. I don't know if they did or not, but I never heard them bark again, until he left, about 45 minutes later. His truck drove by my bedroom window, followed by a chorus of barking dogs.

Now, I'm no expert by any means, and I do understand his good intentions, but personally, I would prefer being awakened by a phone call, or even a knock on the door, in the middle of the night, than to wake up to find someone "trespassing" on my property.
Not to mention the safety issues for himself. Three dogs chase his truck barking, two of those dogs are pretty big, and he gets out without attempting to notify the homeowners? Honestly, he was lucky. Buddy was in defense mode when I got there. And Buddy is not small.
And let's face it, we live out in the country. A lot of people have guns. Showing up on someone's property unannounced, when it's too dark for them to see your identification, and without your flashing lights running, well... it's just not the smartest decision. For your customer or for yourself.

So... off of my soapbox about customer service, and back to the conclusion of my weird night... I walk in the house, take my shoes off at the door, and proceed to walk thru the house barefoot, as I often do.

And somehow get a splinter in the bottom of my foot.

Seriously.

We have all tile or laminate flooring, all of which has been installed for months. Winter is over, so there's no longer any firewood inside.

How the heck do I get a splinter?!?

So I hobble into the bathroom, grab some tweezers (different ones than I used on the tick, thank goodness I have multiple pairs!), and spend the next five minutes or so digging a splinter out of the bottom of my foot.

Good times.

I crawl back into bed around 3am, and hear the electric company truck roll by around 3:15am.

My alarm goes off at 6am. But I somewhat successfully ignore it until 6:45am.

I wake up. I peek in on Jena as I walk out of our bedroom.... and find her on the floor. Again.

****

See. Nothing huge. Nothing major. Just a series of anomalies that added up to the weirdest night ever.

And a very sleepy Jodi.