Good afternoon to my crazy friends.. ( How do I know I have crazy people in my life?? ?? --uhhh ...like........it takes crazy to know crazy..?? Hows THAT for a start..)
I figured I would take my experience that happened to me yesterday and hopefully brighten your day by telling you about it ..making you forever grateful that it didn't happen to you!
As a few of you know and a few of you who don't know and a few of you who don't give a fat goose fart to know...
well~~ I'm going to tell you anyway..........
Since last Thursday I have been sick! Nooo I don't have pig flu.. ( although the masses of phone calls and emails I have received trying to diagnose my symptoms throwing me into the 'Land of the Swine' have been flattering.. ) I love you all for caring... But what I "think" I have/had is a really bad chest cold with hateful body aches and... ( this is the kicker**) I have been totally without a voice since Saturday.
Ooohhhhhh yes.. that's right....you heard correctly.. I didn't stutter.
Teresa.. TOTALLY MUTE! No talky talky.. Nothing! Nada! Zip! A source of jubilant celebrating rib snorting glee for some I am sure, but for me it was as close to Hell as I want to come.. Do anything to me.. but DON'T take my voice..
But~~~~without a voice I have been!
I was sick Sunday and Monday but actually other than my lack of voice which consisted of only making a slight hoarse whispery pathetic squeak every now and then, I have started to feel almost back to normal.. ( For those of you sitting in the peanut gallery picking your nose.. don't comment please. Normalcy is everyone's personal definition.. )
Yesterday I didn't feel too bad.. much better in fact. ... Body aches had almost diminished. In fact I felt really good so I was up and around all day long cleaning, doing laundry etc.. and could actually make this weird little strained squeaky whispery sound emerge into occasional distinctive words ..which although it hurt to do so.. I felt like I was once again going to be able to rejoin the land of the audible living.
Ok.. back to my story....
You all know how much I love Halloween.. and with the rain and wind we've been getting and me feeling like hammered dog poo, I have not had a chance to decorate my yard and premises yet for the All Hallows Eve...which is unthinkable for me.
Knowing I had to be gone all next week to old Californy my time was running out.
So I think .. Why not today!! Yes!! Yes!! Today was the day!! I knew it was a bit cold and drizzly and yes it looked like it could really rain.. but in my mind I was thinking.. it will be real easy to drive those grave markers , fencing etc into the wet soft ground..
So with that plan in mind, I plug my IPod in my ear.. Lovingly caress my dial to Trace Adkins.. and proceed to dance and silently lip sinc my way into the mood of Halloween...((actually the mood was for me to be at a Honky Tonk Bar...but that was a definite no go.. so I had to settle for the mood of Halloweeeennnn))
So I get all my boxed stuff out on the porch that I have gathered up so far.. I make a pac with myself that I am ONLY going to do the basics this year. I am not going to go crazy like I normally do and continue to add things as I go along. ( my lack of time is of essence here remember?) so I kinda take an inventory of what I have ..and realize that all my big stuff is in the barn.. and of course by this time the weather has changed and it's raining down pretty good. Sooo... Temporarily nixing the idea of actually putting it in the yard I box up the 3 boxes of stuff..stack it on the porch... and decide if I can't get it in the yard, at least I could finish gathering up what I needed from the barn so I would be ready for Wednesday or Thursday IF it ever decided to stop raining.
Away I go to the barn... Now for those of you who don't have a visual of what you have to wade through in there.. there isn't any words to describe it. Mark and I are pack rats ... and we have saved and stored everything for the past 40 years that isn't worth a plug nickel for anything........in the barn...
So.. I start the climb to go upstairs into the loft of.... *drum roll please* ................ "The Barn".. ((wondering if I should leave a note in case I never return))
It's packed with all kinds of seasonal decorating stuff.. Very little of it of course is properly covered or packed.. ( another bad barn habit we have)
I have electric lighted pumpkins and skeletons , stuffed people and ghouls ..you know~~ just stuff I use for Halloween.. Understand too ..and remember I said that they were all improperly packed and uncovered..... so there is tons of white bird poop and mud-dobbers nests all over the place hooked to everything I have in there. So I meticulously gathered things together digging around and under other things.. (old Halloween crap that should have been thrown away) anxiously anticipating what I will find.
Ohhh .. it's exciting..! There is lots of stuff ....
After at least 10 trips up and down the stairs loading the truck and thinking I am finally done... I go back up, taking one last look around.
And what catches my eye but the big old casket coffin I made about 12 years ago out of a huge heavy triple cardboard reinforced freezer box.. Well I know I said I wasn't going to add anything.. but the longer I stood there and looked at it.. the more a visual plan started to come into effect.
I precariously stepped over and around Rudolph and Santa Claus, some bird poop covered blue tarps that were covering 12 or so lighted reindeer...and a couple stupid Elfs. ( who really just wanted to be Dentists) and made my way to the back of the room.
There I single handedly proceeded to try to lift, raise and drag this horribly heavy box coffin to an area where I could clean it out and see what it was filled with.
Ohhhh yeah!!! Hindsight............I know!! Bad bad baaaaaad bad bad bad bad idea....
But I unfortunately don't have the gift of seeing into the future, so I continued to struggle and cough and grunt and I finally got this box on top of an old 50 gallon aquarium stand. you know... so I could really get my head in there at eye level to see all the Halloween "goodies" that I had forgotten I stored in there. Forget that it was at least 12 yrs ago and anything that was a "goodie" once., was most likely, NOT a goodie now.
But that wasn't important! My mind wasn't on the past.. No sireeee! It was on the future image of a Halloween funeral parlor and graveyard in my front yard! Nothing was stopping me now. I was on a mission!
First off, there was still a ton of that old Halloween cobweb stuff that you buy all stretched over and across the top of the "coffin" ..complete with bird poop, leaves, hay and straw and other stuff unbeknownst to man sticking and tangled to it.
Keeping everything intact of course was mud-dobbers nests ( must have been 30 all hooked and attached to everything in there securing it tight inside the box ) That did not deter a fearless country girl like myself. Heck no~~Take more than that to stop me from finding lost Halloween treasures.
It did though ..very fleetingly, cross my mind that there might be spiders or 'something' in all that crap. But I dismissed it just as fast..
And besides I figured .. what..if anything.. was in there, had surely escaped by now with me dragging, banging, tipping crashing this monstrosity across the barn floor.
Besides... .. I ask you.......who could think with any common sense and foresight while Trace Adkins was filling your head with fantasy crooning of wild unabandoned love on a smoky bar room floor.. huh?? ...
So come on....cut me some slack...I wasn't thinking straight.
So I let fly out the window all my thoughts and I threw myself into this project ...arms and head first, digging and feeling around coming up with all kinds of" well... *stuff*.......
There was a couple old nasty sleeping bags and a beat up hateful pillow ( you know of course ..for Dracula to sleep on ) .. a lower half of a stuffed man in overalls, an upper part of a man with a rotted flannel shirt with a knife stuck in his chest and what was once fake blood (have no idea what the foul stuff had become after 12 yrs) an old stuffed arm... a Devils head that was stuffed ( the mask had literally rotted to the stuffing) rat traps with rubber rats in them which by the way ( for future reference...rubber disengages from traps after so many years..and sticks to your fingers. ) a small, what was once *real* pumpkin (((Don't ask me why I would have kept it))) which had rotted so bad it was nothing but a dried up stem and black hard ball, and all kinds of rubber snakes. A full head set of rubber devils horns which was melted and stuck together to the plastic devils pitchfork with a broken handle.. .. Spiders and bugs that were tangled up in the cob webbing. ..some real ~~ some not~~of which I proceeded to detangle with utmost witchery care..
It was going good.. Normally I would have been talking out loud to myself, with the spirits and whoever from the Halloween afterlife as I was sorting through... but this time because of my lack of sound and no voice...I was in high 'silent' spirits.. I was joyously being very verbal in my head chattering quietly within my own thoughts when I began pulling the old torn and raggedy sleeping bag out of the box. I should have stopped with the loose items in the box.. I should have never ever gone any further.................................................I should have.....but I didn't!
For there...nestled within the confines of this pile of flannel and zippered cotton was a rat! I am not talking about a mouse.. I am talking about a RAT!! A very large, very fat.. very long heavily tailed big bugged eyed RAT! Who didn't much like being disturbed.. She ran up the box.. down the side of the box.. JUMPING... no, not jumping~~LEAPING..... Hurling herself through the air I tell you.. hitting my shoe with a thud!!!
I still had the sleeping bag clutched in my hand, and as I was insanely jumping and running backwards, I have no idea but I must have given it a scattered flip .....................finding out immediately that inside it were 3 mice which.... ..and because I had scared the bejesus out of them, and dislodged them out of their sleeping place...they JUMPED!!! JUMPED mind you ..TOWARDS me!!!! Not only did one hit me on my ball cap... one landed on my shoulder and tore down my arm with the speed of light!! Understand in one swift moment.. my most serene happy Halloween treasure hunting had exploded in a scene out of a personal Horror movie. ..I reacted instantly!
Staggering backwards.. flaying my arms.. ear buds and Trace Adkins going one direction.. ball cap in another.. I fought for my life
from whatever other sleeping bag demons were after me.. During these horrifying moments I vaguely remember screaming.... What should have been this 10 minute terrifying blood curdling scream.. instead came out as this unstoppable, muted, pathetic, croaking, long pitiful squawk.. which immediately afterwards ,felt as if someone had decide to forcibly line the inside of my throat with red hot charcoal briquettes...!!!
Realizing I had thrown myself back up against the old rusty 30 hp Evinrude boat motor.....I proceeded to take an inventory of what had just transpired. What seemed like hours.. but I knew were only seconds, left me exhausted, panting for air...shaking uncontrollably .. ...sweating.. and with the utmost certainty that I "wet myself"!!!
I realized in my flight of fright I had dropped my cell phone....thrown my ball cap and I-Pod ear buds across the floor.. lost a shoe, tore my sock and knocked the Coffee Can Christmas tree over against Mrs Claus ..breaking 3 bulbs.
I can tell you this. ................There won't be any damned coffin in my front yard this year..
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