Paranoia

I have never slept well. My mom told me that as a child, as soon as nightfall I thought it was "play time". I have trouble falling asleep and once I do finally drift off any noise at all will wake me up. On top of that I'm a paranoid sleeper. Every noise I hear is someone breaking into the house or an animal in the garage or a coyote trying to get the lambs. Of course, none of that has been true so far. But out here there are so many more strange noises and I'm always worried something bad will happen to the animals.

The other night, after reading for a hour and being asleep for just half-an-hour, I woke up to a strange sound. It was faint, but sounded like metal rubbing against wood - like a gate or fence being pushed against a wooden post (or so it was in my imagination). My first thought was that a raccoon or opossum was trying to get into the chicken coop. So I got out of bed and went out on the back porch, in my tank top, in the cold, to listen. Five minutes later, I still hadn't heard anything. Back to bed.

After about 10 minutes laying and waiting, I heard the sound again. Very faint. Maybe like something pushing on the garage door? Or pushing on the sheep's gate? But I had to strain hard to hear it, so I couldn't be sure.

Now at this point, a normal person would probably think "Well, if it were serious I would be able to really hear something." And that person would go back to sleep. I mean really - If the sheep were in trouble they would baaahhh out. The chickens can make a serious racket when they are unhappy. But, I'm anything but normal when I can't sleep and there was no possible way I could go back to sleep until I knew exactly what that noise was.

I went back out on the deck. Standing there freezing and listening, I couldn't hear a thing. How could that be? If the sound was coming from outside, it should be louder when I went outside. But no. Back inside.

Guess what, I could hear it again. This time I decided to pay very close attention and figure out the location it was coming from. Towards the window on the opposite side of the bed. I sat up and leaned. That's when I realized what the sound was. The sound I was hearing was Jeremy snoring, very lightly.