Prayers

Oct 4, 2013

So, today there was a bat in my car......

Yes.  That's what she said.  You read that right.  It's kind of a long story.

I have to go back a few days.  I'm sorry but it was gradual and I was stupid.

TUESDAY EVENING
Tuesday night we had the yard mowed.  This necessitates us taking down a gate and  unhooking an electric fence to get the mower into the back yard.
I was blabbing on the phone with my cousin and the guy got the yard mowed and the dogs were in and the boys decided to go to a football game, which was fine.
So pretty soon I realize that the dogs need to go out and I'm still blabbing on the phone with my cousin and not thinking and the house is quiet so I let the dogs out.
It took approximately 3 seconds for me to realize that I had just let the dogs out and no one had even thought about putting the gate back up.
I scream "OH MY GOD!!!!  THE DOGS!!!!!! I HAVE TO GO!!!!!!" and throw down the phone, grab my keys, and head for the front door.  Which was open.  I see the dogs streaking down up the street and I scream at the top of my lungs "JACK!!!! SHADOW!!!!!" and they pay no attention to me whatsoever and so I jump in the car.
I start to back up and realize my fourth son has blocked me in with his truck and so do I get out to see if he left the keys in it?  NO!!! IT WILL TAKE TOO MUCH TIME!!!!!!! And so I maneuver my poor little blocked in car around until I can rip out of the driveway, drive catty corner straight through the neighbor's yard, and then I see them!!!  Only 4 houses up!!!! I scream to a stop in the driveway and talk in a very ugly tone of voice to the dogs, who hop right in, thrilled to have a ride, the stupid idiots.
Back home, into the garage, making sure the outside door is shut so they don't do it all AGAIN before I can collapse, the shutting of the gate, the hooking up of the electric fence, and then said collapse.

WEDNESDAY MORNING
We get in the car to go to work and school and I notice what I think of as "dirt balls" on the dash.  "Dirt balls" are what I call the dirt that collects in the paws of dogs with webbed feet, and even if you get the bottoms of their pads clean, you (that is to say *I*) often find these dirt balls strung through the house later.  Then I vacuum them up and tell myself that dogs are worth it.
So I chalk up what is on the dash to the exuberance of the dogs in their excitement and my torment of Tues. night.
We go on with our lives.  Everything is normal.

This is the dash of my car.  On this side of the crack you will see a little thingy.  This little thingy IS NOT A DIRTBALL.  ARG!

THURSDAY MORNING
Passed in blissful ignorance of anything being amiss.  Except for more dirtballs, this time on the back of the head rest in the car but I just chalked that up to my own blessed obliviousness and lack of observational skills and those darned dirtballs.  They seemed to be everywhere, but not stressing out about these kinds of things helps me feel better, so I decided to ignore that crap!  The rest of the day passed without incident.

FRIDAY MORNING
When we get in the car and My Oldest Baby puts on his seat belt, there is what sounds like a cricket chirping way down inside where the belt disappears into the plastic of our finely made car that is mostly plastic.
He bangs on the plastic side of the car and repeatedly says that it's annoying.
I wonder aloud how a cricket could get into our car????
I drop the boys off and take my usual route to work.  My usual route is a meandering one and not one that goes directly to work.  I would live to reconsider the wisdom of this route very shortly.
As soon as I turned onto a road with no shoulder and ditches on each side, a heavily traveled road at that time of day, since that road leads to the school, a bat flutters up and lands on the visor on the passenger side.
I SWEAR TO GOD IT WAS LOOKING RIGHT AT ME, and I had the thought that it even looked kind of cute, and I even started rolling down the passenger window,
WHEN IT STARTED FLYING AROUND AND THE VOICES IN MY HEAD (ALL OF THEM!!) STARTED SCREAMING.
AS WAS I!!
Why did I come this way?  There was no where to pull off!  I ALWAYS come this way!!!!!  WHY didn't I go straight to work?  I work with many men, none of which can resist telling a woman she's "silly" and proving their manhood by killing a bat, or anything, really, that you can't get out of your car!!!
WHY was I thinking about this with everybody else just screaming inside my head?  FOCUS!!!!  MUST GET CAR STOPPED!
And I started driving really fast(!!!!!!) and trying to look in the rear view mirror to see if it was still flying around WITHOUT MOVING MY HEAD VERY MUCH because I was absolutely SURE it was going to get stuck in my hair and, in it's panic, bite and scratch me and then I would have to get rabies shots, but I wouldn't even be able to get those until I had gotten rid of THIS BAT THAT WAS FLYING AROUND IN MY CAR (was it??? was it flying around?????)  I couldn't see and I was afraid to move and about that time I realized how FAST I was going and I started hoping that a cop would pull me over because then I could GET OUT OF THE CAR.  I didn't even care if I got out right in the middle of the road.  The cop would understand!!!!
So I turned (SCREEEEEEEECHHHHHH) onto the first road that I was going slow enough to make it around and I whipped (SCCRRRREEEECCCCHHHHH) into my bosses/dear friend's driveway (he wasn't home), threw it into park, throwing a little gravel from SLAMMING ON THE BRAKES, grabbed my umbrella, opened the doors, and guess what I found?????
The bat was on the BACK OF MY HEAD REST!!!  Just sitting there like I was a crazy person for getting so upset!!!  So I whacked behind it and it flew up, bounced down and got stuck under the emergency brake, which made me scream, not too loud, and then hold my breath as I now ROOTED FOR THE LITTLE SUCKER TO FIND HIS WAY TO FRESH AIR, which was liberally whooshing through the entire car as I had opened all the doors, and I think it confused him.
He sat on my seat as he gathered his wits and I snuck around behind him and whacked the seat hard enough that it actually propelled him into the air a little (one more little scream there) and he sort of half fluttered out to freedom, not very enthusiastically if you ask me.
But it was over!!  As quick as I have moved in quite some time, I  shut all the doors, wonder who was watching THAT LITTLE SIDESHOW as they sipped their coffee, and fled to work.  Where I immediately explained everything that my boss/dear friend would undoubtedly be questioned about (possibly quite heavily) when he returned to his abode.

Anyway, a couple of things occurred to me.

The first was that I really needed to clean the car.

The second was HEY!  All these bats keep showing up in my life and I just keep killing them or at least scaring them to death: maybe a bat is supposed to be my totem.

So I googled it.
Totem  Check it out.  It said many wonderful things, some of which seemed pretty good.  Such as,

If you have the bat as your totem you are extremely aware
of your surroundings. Sometimes you can be overly sensitive to the feelings of others. Additionally, you are quite perceptive on a psychic level, and are prone to have prophetic dreams.

Uh-huh.  uh-huh.......but if you often have bats pop up in your life, being aware of your surroundings is a life skill you develop.  That cannot be just me, right?

So then I google knowing what your totem is.  Hmmmmmmm
And that's where they lost me.  I freely admit patience is not my long suite, and I am pretty comfortable with the fact that it never will be, but, seriously, when they got to the part about
  • Vessels need to be emptied out before they can be filled. The capacity of the human heart is no different. Animal energy is expansive, and must have room to flourish. We can allow that room for the fullest animal expressions (and allowing rich animal relationships) by emptying out. What do I mean by this? To encounter the animal parallel, we must make a clearing within the woods of our souls that is suitable and attractive to our energetic animal counterparts. Empty out judgments, preconceived notions, limitations, emotional clutter, and doubts. These limitations are easily replaced with the wisdom and virtues of our animal kin.
Oh come on.  Emptying vessels, making a clearing in the woods of my sou?  I was already exhausted!!  Yaddah yaddah yaddah.  I don't even consider my soul "woods".  I never thought of that.  I'm sure my soul is more rolling hills, open plains, probably a beach in there somewhere.  Trees, my soul has plenty of but I have never noticed any "woods" and even if I had I lack the ambition to make a clearing in there!!  If God wanted a clearing in the woods of my soul, (and I'm not saying there ARE woods in my soul), then there would BE a clearing in the woods of my soul.  There are no woods in my soul, to the best of my knowledge.  Things like this drive me insane.  More insane than normal.  You get the point.  You must or you would not still be here.

They lost me and I didn't even get half way down the page.  That is even unusual, because normally I will read anything, but a woman who can conquer a bat in her car without having a wreck before 8 in the morning has CHOICES about what she reads, and I was not feeling this anymore.

On to whatever comes next.  Probably buying steel wool. :D

But you never know.

No comments:

Post a Comment

These are my thoughts, which sometimes drive me crazy and sometimes keep me sane, but are always entertaining. I call this Lace Your Days With Hope because I can't find enough hope to make an entire quilt out of. Stay tuned, and add your own!