Today has gone by so fast! It’s amazing how I can putter all day long and the time just zips by. I didn’t even mean to get a lot of things done today, but I ended up getting a lot of things done. I guess that’s a good day!

Though I am freaking tired, particularly my legs. Wheelbarrows are the stupidest things ever. They are completely unwieldy, especially for someone small and somewhat short. My legs may never be the same after stumbling around trying to get a wheelbarrow of dirt from point A to point B on both Saturday and today. Though … well … I guess my legs needed a workout, and they did get one. Ow.

I am so excited about my little container garden. I just had to say that again.

The chili for dinner is at that point where it is really starting to smell so good, but it isn’t ready to eat yet. I hate that time period between smelling good and ready! I am massively hungry, which is only making it worse. Will dinner time please hurry up and get here? Maybe I should go hover over my precious plants again. I somehow managed to lose an entire morning and part of an afternoon doing that earlier.

Getting married, starting a job or going to the dentist have long been recognised as sources of great stress.

But it seems they are now matched by a new, peculiarly 21st century affliction - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Millions apparently suffer from “no mobile phobia” which has been given the name nomophobia.

I know people like this. They completely freak out if they can’t get a signal or their battery starts to get low, no matter where they are, what they are doing, or if they think they might need to make a call any time soon. Pure panic at the thought that they might not be able to make or receive calls for a little while, and they aren’t young folk who have always known and had cell phone either. Nope, they are people just like me who remember a day and age when we didn’t even have answering machines. If you weren’t home, you weren’t home, and we didn’t have to have conversations with friends and family while we were doing the shopping or driving down the highway. Why some of us even lived without any phone at all, and somehow we survived just fine!

Researchers advise those keen to avoid nomophobia to keep their credit topped up, carry a charger at all times, give family and friends an alternative contact number and carry a pre-paid phonecard to make emergency calls if your mobile is broken, lost or stolen.

Sure, those are good ways to avoid the symptoms of this ridiculous phobia, but it’s not going to stop a person from having it, which I think should be the goal. This advice is like telling someone who is afraid of heights to not go up high or someone with agoraphobia to just stay home. Most shrinks would agree, I think, that while that advice might keep these people from experiencing their fear, it does nothing at all for the root cause.

How to get over nomophobia? Turn off your phone. Occasionally leave the house without it. Leave it in the glovebox when you go shopping. Ignore it, even if it is ringing. Stop talking on it while operating heavy machinery … like your car. Realize you don’t have to be in contact or constantly contactable 24/7/365. The world will not end if your best friend has to wait a few hours to tell you about her latest fight with her boyfriend. Silence is a freaking blessing in the world today, and being out of touch from time to time even more so.

Personally, I think every young person should have to live without any phone at all for a couple of years. It teaches you to be resourceful and self-sufficient, and it brings home quite clearly what phone calls are actually important and which are not when you have to get yourself to a pay phone every time you want to make a call. I speak from experience.

Now fear of lack of internet, shall we call it nonetphobia? Yeah, that I have, but even when the internet is out for a while, after the initial shock of not being able to be on line passes, I find I do just fine without it as well.

I increased the size of my “farm” this morning. After I finished my coffee on the porch, I started puttering around in the back yard and found two large tub-like pots. Since I still had some good dirt, some compost, and some seeds, I thought I might as well plant something. The seeds are quite old, so I have no idea if any of them will come up (I put in just about all of them in hopes four of each will germinate — I may end up transplanting some elsewhere), but it’s worth trying. So now I have cucumbers and squash that I hope will grow up and produce some produce!

I also planted one small clay pot with marigolds. Hey, I had the seeds. Maybe they’ll grow!

Also, I am thinking of putting some of our pre-compost mulch on the top of all my containers. There was already some kind of critter pawing around in one of my boxes. No damage done, but still. The neighborhood cats have all sorts of locations to paw around in, so I think they can leave my boxes alone.

I can’t believe it’s already 2 pm, and I spent the whole morning outside messing around with pots, dirt and seeds. I wouldn’t have come in when I did, but it started raining. Boo. Hiss. Though it’s good for the plants, so I shouldn’t complain. It’s a good thing the rain forced me to come in, because I really need to thaw some hamburger and get the chili for dinner started anyway. I should probably do the dishes from this weekend too. Boo. Hiss.

Sitting on the porch drinking southern pecan coffee and watching my veggie plants grow and the rain fall. It’s spring!

It’s already Monday again. No matter what I do, there’s always a Monday!

The weekend felt too short. I feel robbed of all that usual weekend laziness, and my muscles are sore from manual labor. This week is going to feel short too. I have to go to Mom’s this week, and it looks like I’ll be spending a night over there. I just need to figure out when I am going. This decision is complicated by the fact I am expecting a package on Wednesday (pink hard hat — woo hoo!) and my Mom can’t possible change her routine and have me there on Thursday, because she has to go shopping on Thursday.

Reason this annoys me? I have to change my whole schedule to come spend two days with her, but heaven forbid anything in her life have to change for two days. As you can imagine, none of this is making me want to go this week. But … I have to or I’ll never hear the end of it. She wants her new software and there’s only three weeks until she needs a new tube of flea goo. I have to come now!

So, anyway, it’s Monday, and I am grumpy. What else is new?

When I am really tired and sleep comes easy, I sleep like a dead person. I’ll sleep through alarm clocks, phones ringing, people talking to me, cats walking on me, terrible storms, Lin watching movies too loudly, and all manner of loud environmental sounds within and without the house. Truly, I am a deep sleeper, particularly during the first few hours of sleep. Last night, I discovered at least one thing that will wake me up from a dead sleep: gun fire.

A lot of people jump at the sound of firecrackers, automobile backfires or other loud popping sounds, mistaking them for a gun going off, but anyone who has been around guns a great deal and had experiences with guns can recognize what to them is a familiar sound and rhythm. Gunfire doesn’t sound like anything else, and the closer it is, the more distinctive it is. And while I single bullet being shot can be mistaken for other things, or rationalized away as something else, a series of six in short succession … pop, pop, pop, pop [pause] pop, pop … is hard to mistake for something else or rationalize away, particularly when it is very near the listener. Even when that listener is asleep.

By the second “pop” I was wide awake, heart pounding, and on the floor by the bed. I’m sure cats flew everywhere during that maneuver, but I didn’t notice. My brain heard that first “pop” and it knew full well what it was and that it was close. Of course even as the popping continued, I tried to convince myself I had freaked out for nothing, but by the time all six pops had sounded, very quickly I might add, rationalizing wasn’t going to work. I was wide awake and there was no mistaking it for something else. Firecrackers, backfires, and other popping noises don’t pump me so full of adrenalin that I feel I could run a marathon without getting winded. I was wired. My heart hasn’t pumped like that in ages.

So, what to do? I got back on the bed and peeked out the window. Everything seemed so quiet and normal for our neighborhood at 1 am. I spent a few more minutes trying to rationalize it away, and then I called the cops. I hadn’t been the first. Others, likely still awake, hadn’t had to convince themselves they hadn’t been dreaming or misheard it and called before me. As I hung up the phone, I heard sirens approaching and then go quiet. Then I saw the flashing lights coming down our street.

From my vantage point, I couldn’t see much thanks to the Insane Neighbors’ stupid camping trailer parked in their driveway. I could see a collection of police cars a few houses down, and occasionally I would see dark figures moving in the flashing lights, but I couldn’t tell which house they were at. It was either Motorcycle Man’s house or the one beyond his. It was too dark, too gloomy, the flashing lights made it impossible to really see what was going on, and that damn camper was completely blocking my view. I thought about going outside to look, but in order to see anything, I’d have had to step all the way out to the street or stand in the Insane Neighbors’ driveway. Seeing as I knew there was someone nearby who had a gun and had already used it once (and wasn’t a police officer), I decided that standing around outside in my pajamas was a dumb idea.

I was still wired, freaked out, and not wanting to be alone in my adrenalin rush, I went to the living room where Lin had apparently fallen asleep watching a movie. He was still asleep. He quite literally can sleep through anything … including his wife shaking him and telling him that shots had been fired on our street and now there are cops all over the place. Yes, he woke up long enough to say “So? Shots are fired in lots of neighborhoods.” Then he stumbled to bed and fell back into slumber. I don’t actually think he was awake even when he was talking to me.

On a side note: one of the things that totally annoys me about Lin is his inability to realize I am freaked out about something and at least offer some comfort. It isn’t only a problem when he is sleeping either. The man lacks both adrenalin and his empathy skills are weak. Dude, wake up and comfort your wife even if she’s freaking out over nothing! Which I wasn’t!

I went and laid down in bed with him and left the window peeking to the cats. They were all over the windows in the bedroom. I tried picking them up and getting them to lay down on the bed, but like me, they were wide awake, wired, and freaked out … and they wanted to see what was going on. Since I couldn’t see anything but the flashing lights, and I couldn’t hear anything but the occasional male voice saying something loud but indistinguishable, I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. That proved difficult with those flashing lights brightening the bedroom windows and the cats pawing at the window blinds to get a better look outside. Lin’s loud snoring didn’t help any either.

At about 2 am, the lights stopped flashing, the cats crawled back onto the bed, and my adrenalin levels dropped. I realized I was tired again and fell back into a peaceful sleep.

I checked the police report web site today, but the weekend reports won’t be listed until sometime tomorrow. I also called the cops, because my curiosity got the better of me. After being transferred to a few different people, I got an answering machine and left a message. Maybe they’ll call back tomorrow. None of the neighbors were around today, or at least none of them were leaving their houses, so … no gossip either. There wasn’t anything in the local news either, and most of the local news stations jump at anything like gunfire in this part of town. I guess I’ll just have to be patient to find out what the hell happened. You know me though, I am not at all patient.

No matter what, I hope that never happens again. It’s not a very pleasant way to wake up, and I’ve lived in neighborhoods where gunfire was a regular occurrence, and it’s no way to live. We aren’t renters anymore, so it isn’t like we can just up and move whenever we feel like it. Not that I want to move (ever). I like it hear, and it’s always been so peaceful, which is why actual gunfire on my street at 1 am was a bit of a shocker.

OK, what’s actually the real shocker is that it wasn’t at the Insane Neighbors’ house. They weren’t home. I heard them drive in and scurry into their house shortly before the cop cars left. If I ever expected to hear gunfire, trust me, that was the house I expected it to come from.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I just ordered a delivery pizza from Papa John’s. Well, how long do you think I can continue to exist, at least in a state that could be described as happy, without pizza?! It’s been close to two weeks! I am having severe pizza withdrawal symptoms!

Of course, it can’t possibly be as good as homemade, but we are desperate for pizza. There were a few places that might have made a pizza closer to the ones I make, but they also wanted entirely too much gold for the precious, precious little things. Papa John’s is at least reasonably good (we ate them for years and years), is large in size, and economically priced.

I’m starving. Hope the pizza gets here soon so I can totally pig out, and believe me, after two weeks of no pizza, I will be pigging out!