and the next stage is...

Crazy. Last night as Jeff put the kids to bed, since I had by then alienated them all with my snappiness, he called me to the back room. His hearing isn't great and all he could hear was some scratching and clicking. He thought it might be more critters. I came into the room and identified the source immediately. The intercom system, which is a reminant from when the house was built, emitted the strange sounds. I turned it down in my son's room but was unable to stop the scratching, static hisses in the main system in the kitchen. I jokingly said, "Hey Mom," to the system and then started to think what if that really was my mom trying to communicate with me. Quickly, to forestall the blatent nervous breakdown approaching, I turned off all the switches and turned down every volume I could find. The sounds did not stop.

I went off to bed wondering if maybe the sounds could be taken for dashes and dots. Sometime in the next thrity minutes while I lay awake in bed, I considered looking up Morris Code on the computer to see if there was some kind of message coming in from the otherworld. Then it hit me, my mom and dad are both in heaven. They aren't wasting their time trying to get some message to me from there. If anything was trying to get through it wasn't from above. So I prayed hard for protection for the family and the noises stopped. Do I think this was a coincidence? Yeah, most likely. On the other hand, every horror movie starts with people dismissing what seems like an obvious danger to those of us watching. So, I'm glad I didn't try to decode the message. What would I have done if it said something? Well, besides write a book about it, of course.

The night was spent dreaming about Dad's funeral. Nothing really happened in the dream. I was just there all night next to the casket. This morning when I woke, I didn't feel well. My stomach insisted sometime in the night I had ingested a brick. Since I knew that wasn't possible, I assumed it was a stomach virus coming on. I cancelled my plans for breakfast with a bestie and after the kids got off to school, climbed back in the bed and stayed there.

I stayed in the bed all day long, not getting up to even shower until right before the kids got home. I screened calls and made the mistake of answering one or two that I shouldn't. So it seems I barreled right from the anger stage to depression. But have no fear my friends, the irritation was back tonight as my husband's raised eyebrows at dinner attested to. My stomach is better but I am still so tired. No static on the radio tonight and I hope no one's funeral is on schedule to play in my dreams.