A Dark Atmospheric Day

A dark atmospheric day.

Roiling skies, leaves swirling around in gusty winds, trees swaying and moaning, angry drops of rain falling helter skelter 

a dark atmospheric day indeed.

Power flickered several times last night and went out briefly as I was heading off to bed. It was out just long enough to mess up the Man's alarm clock.

I had to wake him up to have him set it again. He gets up at different times depending on where he's working for the day. I never know what time he's getting up. I wasn't about to guess and pick a random time for him to wake up. He was a little cranky until he realized I was saving him a lot of trouble in the morning WHEN HE DIDN'T WAKE UP.

I could hear the wind howling and the house was making all kinds of noises. Scary noises. I do not like being up by myself when it sounds like that. I decided to set my phone alarm for the time the Man needed to be up just in case the power went out again. Which it did. 

My alarm went off at 5:30am and I jabbed the Man to let him know he had to get up. 

"It's 4:30!" he answered fiercely. 

"No, it's not!" I answered, just as fiercely.

"Yes, it is!" he retorted. "The clock says 4:30!"

"The clock is wrong! We must have lost power again!" I said. "My phone says 5:30!" What a ridiculous conversation to be having at 5:30 in the morning.

"Oh," was the reply, as he got up out of bed.

I huffed and rolled over, pulling the covers up over my head, and going back to sleep. I didn't have to get up at 5:30am.

Tra la la.

Our small town has a scarecrow contest each fall. People decorate the town green with all kinds of scarecrows - it's such a fun sight to see as you're driving through the center of town. 

I was sitting in the parking lot of the post office, looking at the town green and the scarecrows. It looked like a massacre. Body parts were everywhere, heads were rolling, displays were upended and blown hither and thither. I wondered if the creators of the scarecrows would think to come by and start repairs. 

And then I noticed a mom and three young children, going from scarecrow to scarecrow righting things and reattaching broken pieces. We have such nice people in our town.

__________

When I got back from the post office, LK and I had to work on a scarecrow for the library. LK had stuffed his jeans and red and black Buffalo plaid shirt with bubble wrap and straw and corncobs so we just had to put him together. We are not engineers. Not by any stretch.  

Actually, you should be thinking "Frankenstein" right now. 

This poor little scarecrow is pieced together haphazardly, with stitches here and there holding things in place. 

We have a bench outside the front door and decided to sit him there, propped up in a corner. His head is a plastic pumpkin lantern so we have the cord laced through his shirt and jeans and then have it wrapped around a spindle on the bench. We used pieces of duct tape and some twine to make sure he doesn't fall over or blow away. As we were fussing with him, body parts kept falling off. He lost a corncob hand, his head kept lolling forward and backward, and his straw kept coming out in the wrong places. The poor little guy just couldn't pull himself together.

Our custodian, G, brought us a great big branch to use in our display. Tomorrow we'll stretch some cobweb material around the branch and dangle a spider or two to make it look a little bit spooky. The three of us had quite a good laugh while we were putting the little scarecrow together. 

I love my job.