I wake this morning, literally frozen in place. Not so much because of the temperatures for a change, no, it’s the pack. For some reason they have all gathered around the top part of my body moving closer and closer, until I’m hanging on by a hair on the very edge of the mattress.
I swear, if I could manage it I would get a twenty by twenty feet bed, just to be able to stretch out, roll over and actually not be in danger of falling out of bed…I assure it has happened before, and undoubtedly will again.
But as I was saying; there I am, my arm twisted beneath my torso–feeling pretty much dead to me–one leg thrown over…Chaos, I think, who’s lying sprawled over the foot end of the bed and I am trying to prevent myself from waking from the discomfort when I’m experiencing a rather interesting dream that is book material, for sure.
I was in a log cabin…probably due to the book I’m working on at this time where the protagonist is staying at a nice big cabin, in the midst of winter.
It is a beautiful place (the dream, of course…the book, too, but I’m trying to explain the dream), white stretching planes of snow-swept hills and valleys, with a faint little sun rising from the distant horizon as dawn arrives.
It is idyllic, beautiful…and as it turns out, quite dangerous.
I am hunkering underneath a shattered window, cold wind sweeping into the cabin making copper colored curtains blow inside with billowing folds. Glass crunches under my bare feet and I peer suspiciously outside. There’s a shotgun in my hands, one of those sawed off things they always use in action flicks, and I know, somehow that it is fully loaded.
There are some scrapes and bruises on my hands, which feel cold from the chill that cannot be countered by the fire blazing in the hearth, and my right arm hurts, somewhat fiercely. (Reality and fantasy mixing, undoubtedly.)
A glance down shows a nasty cut slashing down from my shoulder to elbow, blood already drying on the woolen sweater that appears to be cut by some sort of cutting device during…whatever event occurred during the night (I don’t recall what it was, drat!)
I’m shifting uncomfortably in my crouched position by the window, a couple of mean looking dogs–not my own–stalking around throughout the cabin chamber, as if keeping their vigil on doors and window alike. They wary, hyped with adrenaline, and snarling occasionally at whatever it is that’s stalking around the cabin.
Blinking against the flare of early sunlight, blinding me for but a moment, I almost miss the move from a small gathering of pines, at least sixty feet away from the building. I tense involuntarily, my hands tightening around the butt of the shotgun and bringing it up to aim, right when something large, dark and ugly comes rushing straight at me.
It’s huge! Vicious teeth sparkling in the morning light as it leaps, inhuman talons flashing and the large body hurling through the open window just when I pull the trigger and…I wake up. Grrrrr.
The monster boxer is attacking the quilt again, and Knight II is jumping up and down the bed in an attempt to wake me up by trampling, half an hour before waking time.
Damn it! Just when things start to get interesting the darn dogs always wake me up. They can’t wait a measly five minutes to let me finish a dream. No. It is their way, or the high way.
Just to make a point, and to let them see who’s the boss, I stay in bed for the remainder of the thirty minutes that are left to me, desperately trying to fall back to sleep to finish the dream. But it is to no avail. By the time the alarm screeches, I roll out of bed and let the dogs out into the main garden for their morning run.
Rather than start the morning rituals, the way I should, I return to the bedroom as soon as I’m alone and reset the alarm for another thirty minutes. I’m off into dreamland the moment my head hits the pillow, but regretfully this nap was uninspiring compared to the interrupted dream and a little grumpily I finally get up and get dressed to the impatient barking of the pack.
The cabin is looking good. The paintings jump out beautifully against the backdrop of the light turquoise varnish of the walls. The couch actually looks neat for a change, and pretty much everything is in place when I go through the morning rituals and finally take the dogs down to the house.
Throughout the morning the sky was overcast–I now have a perfect view of the valley, and I checked several times–but by the time I arrive at the courtyard gate, the sun breaks through, feeling nicely warm on my skin just seconds before I head under the corrugated aluminum roof that covers most of the courtyard.
Most of yesterday’s laundry has dried, and as soon as I’ve deposited my bag on the counter, I head back again to take it down. There is only one dog blanket to hang and while hanging it I come to the infuriating realization that sometime during the previous day some pesky dog got its maul into one of my boxing gloves. Darn it! The dog in question must have literally dug into the closet shelve four feet high and picked out the one thing I can’t easily replace.
The glove is ruined, too, or so I see once I pick it up in hopes of still being able to use it. The half-fingers are gone completely, and the padding has been torn to pieces, leaving nothing but the back behind. I curse a blue streak, grumbling dire warnings at my innocent looking pack as I toss the ruined protection in their midst and stalk back into the house.
Of course they have ruined the right hand glove. It could not have been the left one, seeing as I’ve got a spare from the last debacle. So this means that tomorrow I can’t do my exercises, since we won’t be going to town later in the day. Drat!
Taking a couple of deep calming breaths, I shove my displeasure aside and set to folding the pile of dry laundry, at which time big brother and grandpa, arrive.
Breakfast comes next, and while the coffee percolates I set up the computer and log onto the net, while, once again, big brother and grandpa head out of the house to repair the inner fence.
We are really going to have to buy a new roll, since the younger, more persistent buggers in the pack keep attacking the metal fence until they have torn another hole in the ten year old fence that keeps them from wreaking havoc on grandpa’s little pack, which lives in the upper part of the garden. It’s in their twisted little minds at the moment, and nothing we do is going to stop them until a full replacement has been put up.
After dealing with a few messages and doing a quick perusal of the chat forums, I get off-line again, and start working on the book project.
The characters are developing nicely, I’ll admit. Their quirks and secrets are becoming more prominent and their habits and behavioral patterns solidifying, as the first indication of romance is thrown into the story.
It is going to be very different from its predecessor, I can already tell, but still there are enough similarities between this character and her sister from part one. Gotta love writing about the Irish. Hah.
I’m pretty focused on the story in the hours that follow, not resurfacing until the evening arrives and my stomach starts to growl.
It doesn’t help much that big brother’s baking a small portion of yesterday’s pasta with cheese, and since he didn’t deign it necessary to make me dinner too, I head to the kitchen to see what I can stuff down my throat without going through too much trouble.
In the end I settle on reheating a serving of spaghetti with yesterday’s sauce and eat it there where my computer has heated the surface of the table during the typing session.
One of the advantages of pasta, I always think, is the fact that it digests easily and doesn’t need a long time to settle. By the time it does, I get up and head for the kitchen to do a few dishes and then tackle the glass–and–wooden doors that I want to hang in the second to last closet for the kitchen.
They’re tall, fully intact and the result of digging through the local landfill area. The stuff people throw away…why, you could build a small house from it. Oh wait, we did that. Hah.
The doors fit perfectly in the closet that we hung in the corner of the kitchen, and after roaming through the supplies for a considerable time, I am finally able to locate enough hinges to hang them.
The temperature is decidedly less hostile today, since I am able to move around in a sweater and T without feeling like I’m freezing. Neither do I hear anyone else complain about the cold.
Though in most places the paint on the doors is still intact, there are enough flaky parts that make me break a piece of glass so I can remove the chips. Sure, I could use the sanding machine–and I will, later on–but freshly broken glass really does the job much better.
While big brother is fitting the first two hinges, I’m clearing away thick layers of bright blue paint and then we both start hanging them into their frames.
Next I sand the wood, removing any bumps and bruises from the old, but still good, wood, and declare the closet ready for the next step at the exact time big brother finishes attaching the last hinge.
Afterwards there’s some debate about which color we’re going to paint the doors, red or blue, and in the end, since the younger sibs think the red color looks fancier, middle sister and I start slapping on paint
The end result is rather charming, I think. It looks a little like one of those old telephone booths in the UK, and everyone is pretty pleased with the way things look.
Just one more painting session to go and we will be able to transport the supplies from the last part of the old kitchen and declare the new one as good as done.
Little sister and I spend the remainder of the evening cleaning up the kitchen that is once again filled with wood shavings, sawdust and light blue paint chips. It’s a mess, but by the time the evening draws to an end, we are both delighted with what was done today.
I have another slice of yesterday’s cake while I sit in the living area, Arthur, one of the big pack members, crawls on my lap for a petting, before the time to go up to my cabin arrives.
Up the mountain another big batch of books awaits sorting. They are the pile that big brother sneakily stole from my shelves during the course of the past six months, or so, and for a while I wonder how it is all going to fit. But, with some strategic shifting and shoving I finally get them all in place and settle behind the computer.
Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, I’m sure. There will be the lessons to fit into the schedule, a trip to the sports store, and a quick trip to the home improvement place.
Ah well, no matter. This was another good day, all things considered. Got things done!
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