You know, of all the things I was expecting, being an active participant in squirrel murder before 7am this morning was not one of them.

I opened my eyes knowing something had woken me up in the grey light of early morning, but not sure what that thing was. Asher staring INTENTLY out my window was the first clue. The next was the scrabbling on the outside of the house.

Fucking. Squirrels.

I went out back and yup- some teenage squirrel was kinda stuck on the wires that run from the ground unit to the main unit on my mini split AC and had knocked the cover off the wires. This is all right behind my bed- so I’m betting I was sleeping pretty deeply to have not registered the absolute racket that must have caused.

This is NOT the route up to the gap between the original roof and the roof for the addition that all the squirrels LOVE-and that I was betting it was trying to get to. The squirrel did not seem to realize this, and kept running to the top of the wires, hitting a dead end, and looking confused.

Not knowing what to do I threw a rock at it.

I did not hit it. I did scare it though.

It fell, really ungracefully, STRAIGHT INTO THE WAITING MOUTH OF A CORGI- gah dog, didn’t know you followed me out.

This- short version- did not end well for the squirrel.

I put the cover back on the wires. I used a shovel and catapulted the “please just be knocked out” squirrel over the fence, and then heard the feral cats over there fighting from the same place it landed about 20 minutes later. If it wasn’t dead before, it sure was after that. Nature and homeowners are brutal and unmerciful, turns out.

I don’t feel as bad about this as you’d think; though it was more murder-y than most of my days. It wasn’t my intention when I knocked it down, so I at least have that.

What it did make me wonder about is if there is some kind of service where you can pay someone to bring over a pack of well trained weasels to let loose in your ceiling to clear out the squirrel population before winter, akin to how you can rent out sheep to clear weeds. Or how they use terriers to kill rats in NYC alleys.

I would pay through the nose for this service, just so we’re clear.

It isn’t what I wanted when I stepped out that back door, pre-dawn today, but it is what it is. Some things die. Don’t we all know it.

(Nobody be sitting there all horrified, deal?)

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It was a weird curveball to the most peaceful couple of weeks I’ve had… hell… in over a year and a half. An almost zen couple of weeks, really.

It’s been lovely.

Is it the new paint? The change of scenery to the bedroom? A switch thrown in the brain?

The bedroom certainly helped as the environment you surround yourself in is exactly what the inside of your mind is. (Why messy depression dens are a thing.) I know correlation isn’t causation, and that causation isn’t always fixed by doing the opposite… and yet anytime my thinking is unclear I clean my room and feel better.

And so the drastic change to my room has had a drastic change on me. During the actual painting I spent 4 nights basically camping in here. No curtains, nothing on the walls, nothing except the bed that I pushed back to the center of the room each morning. I was woken up each night with the full moon shining through the window on my face. (painting happened that week when it was full Sept. 7th and mostly full in the days after.)

You’d expect this would result in terrible sleep, interrupted as it was… but it seemed to have had a similar effect that camping does and reset my brain. I woke up, stretched in the moonlight and very easily went back to sleep each and every night. I slept sooooo well. It threw a switch to the ol’ circadian rhythm and I started going to bed at 9:30 or 10pm… barely able to stay awake long enough in the evenings to get my youngest down. I was taking naps during the day too. By the time I finally set the new curtains up after the painting was done I must have gotten 20 extra hours of sleep to what I normally get- it was fucking GLORIOUS how well rested I felt.

Most of those nights I woke up at 2 or 3am. But on Thursday I woke up, looked at the time, and seeing it was 4:37am I hopped out of bed and went and sat outside and talked to Lucas for an hour. I didn’t get any responses, mind you, no cardinal or mockingbird showed up this time. The clouds skidding over the moon didn’t spell anything out, at least not in an alphabet I know. He did feel very close though.

I don’t know. It has been such a start to a new season and a sustained good mood that even my mom’s death-a-versary this week couldn’t knock down.

Is it a one off? I guess we’ll see. I am planning on leaving the curtain open when the moon is full again in October. For science and to expand the data set.

It also has coincided to the period of time I’m not drinking during the week and that I’ve have lost 6 pounds without any other changes… so like. It’s all interconnected, just like everything else in this world.

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As for the drinking- it’s not like I had a problem. But I very distinctly remember walking in the house September 3rd and going: “Hmm. I’d totally drink a beer right now, but if it’s not a problem then it won’t be a problem if I don’t.”

And it wasn’t.

I do love a beer after working in the garden… but its been fine without it.

I have been tracking it since January as I had a New Year’s Resolution to drink 3 days a week or less this year. Which I’ve mostly held to, outside of the hardest months of May or August… and my Mexico trip in March. (I TOTALLY DID IT ASIDE FROM WHEN I DIDN’T!) As I can well attest it doesn’t help the hard times, so I will try to remember that in the next hard month I have- as there will always be hard months, it is just a fact that we pick them up as we all move through life.

Tracking it like this has been helpful, I find, as data is best looked at not in the daily but in the overview. As I continue to ramp up to taking better care of my health this is an aspect I’m glad to have the data on. I plan on tracking it again next year and I’m fairly resolved to be weeknight sober as this has been working out pretty swimmingly for me these past few weeks. I still, maybe, have to learn to not drink in social settings.. or not? I do love having a beer when hanging out, and it doesn’t feel like I need to deny myself to oblivion… I don’t know. I guess we’ll see where it leads. But I have been so enjoying the good sleep that that is a driving force in decisions I make lately.

I’m tracking steps and calories and macros too. And really being intentional with skin and hair care and meditating and journaling. All kinda boring, but play a role in this new life I’m trying to live.

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Anyway.

I sometimes go, oof, this is a little exposing to write about… and then I just go: NO. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

My mother (as I told my cousin last month) sat on her various shames like a dragon coiled around gold coins and hoarded them all the days of her life- never exposing them to people or the air… and it fucking killed her.

I am resolved to share the messy or embarrassing or personal (or squirrel murdery) as I am just a mere human in the world- something I have to remind myself of on a fairly regular basis isn’t anything to be ashamed of. And in fact, vulnerability and honesty are strengths.

It is okay to fail or flail or fall short. It’s okay that some of the things that have happened to us have sucked. It’s okay that sometimes we’ve sucked. In spite of all of it, it is okay.

As I also said to that same cousin last month: “Everyone makes mistakes and that’s okay. Not me though, I have to be perfect.“~sarcasm~

I was making a joke. Just to be clear.

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I’ll leave you with some memes from the week- as always.