East of Normal and West of Weird

I like to tell people, "Normal is just a setting on your dryer". And then sometimes there are moments where I think to myself, "I am a rather strange bean."

Not that I'm complaining, no not at all! You see, I thoroughly enjoy being a rather strange bean. It certainly provides one with an interesting repertoire of stories to tell, should one ever become bored for some reason. And I have a lot of those weird stories.

A lot. 

I'm in a story-telling mood tonight, but I don't feel like freaking anyone out, so I'll tell two of the ones closest to "normal".

Fire is your Friend!

So earlier this winter, I had a bunch of my friends/siblings over at my house for somebody's birthday. It might've been mine, I can't remember. (There's a lot of us.) Anyway, it was really really cold outside, and gross and wet, and not nice weather at all, really. Well, unless you had a cup of hot tea and a good book, but that's beside the point. The point was, it was super chilly outside and my dad was really busy working on something he had to get done for his job. He's usually the person who starts the fires in the fireplace, and I tend them and keep them from going out. (Earlier that week, I'd spent an entire day keeping a fire going because it was so cold out.) So since my dad was busy, I decided that I'd build the fire in the fireplace before everyone got there! 

Don't laugh. It wasn't a disaster!

So Dad walks me through the basics of what I needed to do to get the fireplace ready (where the thing to open the flue was, for instance) and I went out to the back yard to collect firewood. Okay, first of all, it was as dark as all getout and the woodpile is in the very back of the yard by a line of overhanging trees. Second, it was cold and windy, and I was out there with just a flashlight and a wheelbarrow. Not fun. Especially when you start hearing creakings and cracklings in the treeline in front of you that you're just sure aren't the feral cats or the wind, and you're thinking, "Well, it's probably not a crazed raccoon or a sneaky bobcat like that one time," as you shake out each individual log before putting it in the barrow. (I've learned by experience that bugs like to get into the bark, and if you bring them into the house, you find them later and it is very unfortunate for everyone.)

By the time the my older brothers got there, I had the logs in the fireplace and some kindling lit, but it was having a hard time catching. One of the guys sat down in front of the hearth with me and we just started shoving wadded-up magazine pages and wood shavings into the flame, because he told me we needed to make something like a bed of coals to help the log catch fire. 

Did I mention we were doing this with our bare hands?

No seriously, we were actually shoving the paper into the flame with our hands. I cheerfully told my mother about this later, and she said, "Why?!" I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, but my answer was, "Because pain is impractical." 

So there you go: a little weird.

Ice is not Nice.

Later that same winter, there were several snow days at my school. Now, down here in the south, "snow day" could mean anything from "a light dusting of white powder" to "three inches of ice covering the parking lot". This time, it was the latter. The first day was fun, spent in snowball fights and hot tea, and I even went sledding for the very first time. 

Yeah, that's right, I'm in my twenties and I'd never gone sledding before.

As I've learned, a chicken feed sack works pretty well as a sled! Although, I preferred my giant tupperware lid. I slid down a giant hill several times, then the last time I fell off the sled and went rolling the rest of the way down with my hat going the opposite direction. Cold and wet, I went back to the dorms, shook out my coat and hat, and went right back out again with my brothers and sisters for a massive snowball war, after which none of us could feel our hands.

The second snow day consisted mainly of hot tea and homework, catching up on anything we might need by the time classes started again.

By the third snow day, I was going absolutely stir-crazy. As I'd mentioned before, there was a good two or three inches of solid ice covering the roads and parking lots, and I was not confident enough to take my car over it to go anywhere. I spent a lot of that day flopped over my bed complaining that I was going mad. Then, that night, my RA came dashing down the hall and announced that she was going skating in the parking lot...sans skates. My sisters and I joined in, slipping on flat shoes and running out to find that the long, thin road linking the parking lot at the top of the hill to the parking lot at the bottom of the hill had suddenly become a modified ski slope. A group of us were taking running (or in my case, waddling, as I was wrapped up in a blanket) starts and then "skiing" down the hill on just our shoes. On either side of the narrow road were ditches filled with giant snow drifts, which made convenient landing places when we fell down.

I started out mostly falling off midway down, but after four or five tries, I was able to pick up speed and coast all the way to the bottom, turning sideways and skidding to a halt. It was really fun, and I couldn't help but feel very slightly Olympic...even though I was wearing oversized sneakers and wrapped in a fluffy pink blanket because I didn't want to put a coat on.

Then, while I was at the bottom of the hill, some girls decided to sled down...

...sitting in either side of a suitcase.

In my haste to get out of the way, I slipped on the ice halfway and did a faceplant on the road. I ended up breaking straight through to the pavement...with my face. I remember seeing stars, as it were, and this kind of shocked moment of "What the heck just happened?!" You know, when you hit your nose, your eyes water. So I'm sitting on the ice in a state of semi-shock, trying my darndest not to cry in front of everyone because it didn't hurt that much! I mean, yeah, my brain was definitely telling me that I was in pain, but my face was so completely numb that I couldn't feel it. I looked up and everyone winced.

When everyone winces when looking at your face, that's not a good sign.

I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear for forty seconds, and my twin sister practically dragged me back inside because I couldn't walk in a straight line, which was hilarious. I got inside, and, oh! Surprise! Blood all over my face! I'd busted my lip, scraped up my chin, and had a huge gash on my nose. Quite honestly, I should've gotten two black eyes out of the deal as well. Meredith went outside and packed a bunch of snow into a plastic bag and made me hold it on my face (which hurt a lot, by the way), and the next morning I looked like this.

Only there was more blood than that.

I didn't realize until the next month that I'd actually broken my nose, but since I reset it myself, it didn't go crooked or anything.

So...yeah...weird stories of weirdness.

Very Strange Dreams.

I'm sure we've all had 'em at some point.

I'm not talking about your average "First Day of School in your Underwear" dream (although those do happen to people).

I'm not talking about nightmares. I very rarely have real nightmares, but when they occur, they are of such a nature that leaves me wide-awake and unwilling to shut my eyes again for hours. 

What I'm talking about are the dreams that are just plain weird. Sometimes in a Lewis Carroll way, sometimes in a Dr. Seuss way, simply bizarre.

I can honestly say I've had some doozies.

For instance, some time back in 2007 (I wouldn't know this unless I'd written it down)

Have you ever seen those little gooey-men toys that you throw against the wall and they stick? And then they kind of cartwheel down? Well, I dreamed that I had two of them: one green, one dark purple. I don't know why, because I've only ever seen them in pinks, blues, and highlighter yellows. Despite having neither faces nor mouths, they could speak. The green one made me shrink somehow (a la Alice in Wonderland) and we were running around the fringe of trees in my backyard, hiding in the underbrush. We were hiding because the dark purple one stretched and stretched and stretched until he was three stories tall...and had evidently decided that world domination was a good alternative to his wall-clinging career. I don't remember why the purple guy was chasing me in the dream (resident human threat? needed a good PR rep? Revenge for being thrown against the wall? who knows!) But I do remember a mouse's-eye-view of my yard, dodging insects and ducking under sticks and dead leaves, being thoroughly grossed out by my slimy green rescuer.

Then there was this other dream, back in give or take 2009

I dreamed that I was playing around in an old house made of wooden planking somewhere in the middle of a clearing. There were a few other teens there with me, none of whom I recognized. One climbed out the attic window and onto the roof, and I followed. There was a large forest at the back of the house, and there were two men with shovels and a bulldozer standing near it. I climbed down the side of the house with the others and we found that the two men were staring at a huge red "x" on the ground. While the other teens stopped to talk to the men, I ignored them and went into the woods with one or two others, playing around. I was jumping off of stumps and boulders, climbing on things that probably weren't sturdy (a bit like I do in real life, come to think of it) and suddenly a hawk flew over my head with the Civil War's Rebel Flag emblazoned on its back.

(weird, right? It gets stranger)

Confused and excited, we ran back and told the two men with the shovels, who promptly organized an expedition into the woods to find said hawk. They were jabbering on about some kind of lost Civil War treasure. I wandered away from the group and started walking along logs, picking up shiny rocks (you know, basically just being the way I was at that age). I heard wingbeats and thought it was the hawk coming back, but it was much bigger. (Here's where it gets really unusual.)

     A bald eagle standing some five feet high lands in the clearing on a wide branch. Its back was to me, and I couldn't see its face. Then, in a moment of perfect silence, it turned its head to one side. 

The bird's left eye was a compass.

Mesmerized, I stared into it and watched the direction in which the needle spun. I called to the others and they saw the eagle as it took off. We headed North, and for some reason we were supposed to be looking for a water moccasin snake. One of them was supposed to be carrying a map in its fangs. No really, like you catch it and hold its head steady and ink comes dripping out of the fangs to form a map on a rock. I was in the creek up to my knees looking for snakes when I woke up.

And to conclude, one of my very strangest dreams.

I had a dream one Saturday night, four or five years ago, that I was walking around my house, looking for something. I didn't quite know what it was. Then I walked into the classroom (actually a large bonus room used for schooling purposes) and found a boy that I did not know. He was small, thin, about twelve years old with short blonde hair and a sharp nose. I was surprised, and rather short-temperedly asked him who he was and what he was doing in my house. He never answered me, but he turned and looked into my eyes and I've never quite been able to describe the emotion on his face. I can't even remember what it was anymore.
I woke up rather confused.
At church that morning, a speaker came to talk about older orphans in Eastern Europe and how they needed love, prayer, and support, especially since it is the younger children who are usually adopted. At a little table in the church foyer were little cards with pictures of specific boys and girls from the children's homes in the specific country who needed prayer. My sister picked one up with two young boys on it, but I didn't see the card until we got home. When she showed it to us at lunch, I got the surprise of my life!
The second boy on the card was the little boy I'd seen in my dream.
And that's a true story.