This weekend I tried to get back into a more normal sleeping rhythm as mine was disrupted by working back to back full time jobs last week, without sleep for 3 days, and cranky as a wet hen, and just about as aggressive, though there is no one here to benefit from it or be hurt by it. UPS doesn't deliver on weekends and I didn't have any visitors. At least not so you'd notice, though I could swear...
When I lived in the cottage in Colorado Springs I had several instances where I would be deeply asleep, heavy into the REM/NREM phase, and I'd hear someone knocking on the door, waking me abruptly from sleep. I got out of bed and went to the door and there was no one there and no sign anyone had been there. The same thing happened this morning, or rather very late last night. At 2:30 AM to be exact.
I was deep into the REM/NREM sleep and 3 loud knocks on the glass front door woke me immediately, dragging me from whatever dream I was enjoying at that moment. (And that seems to be the only similarity; I'm always dreaming something really good.) I woke to darkness and listened for another knock. Nothing. No sounds outside of the furnace and the lack of wind howling outside. No shuffling. No sound of the suet cage banging on the back door -- because all the birds were asleep and not feeding for a change. Nothing. Even the usual stirrings, creakings, rumblings, and crackings were silent. I got up in darkness, leaving the light off, and walked boldly down the hallway. The front door glowed with light from the big pole light in the driveway, a blue glow that lit the way adequately. I peered through the front door glass and there was no sign of anyone have been there since yesterday afternoon when UPS dropped off a small package in a plastic bag. His footprints were nearly filled in from the snow that had since fallen. Nothing new. No sign of new tracks in the driveway and the old tracks were also covered with newly fallen snow. I went to the back door and there were no signs of anyone have been there either. The bird tracks were covered with new snow and there were no tire tracks in the driveway in any direction. I went back to bed.
When I was fully awake this afternoon I got online and searched the Net for answers, as I had done the first couple of times it happened and I decided I had not missed anyone at the door. The explanations ranged from dream interpretation (important news or financial collapse) to UFO visitations (3 knocks akin to a hypnotist snapping his fingers to wake the hypnotized from sleep) to awaken the abducted from their drugged trance to some sort of neurologic disorder.
It wasn't sleep apnea or even obstructive sleep apnea because there has been no snorting, gasping, feeling of being hag-ridden, someone sitting on my chest (cats stealing breath) or other signs of choking or loss of oxygen. I do tend towards sinus and nasal congestion, but that has more to do with changes in atmospheric pressure (better than arthritis and bunions for telling the weather) than with sleep apnea. And there were no signs of other physiologic disturbances.
I suppose I could go with some apparition or spirit trying to get my attention because Kevin had stopped by some time this morning, about 8 AM, but I thought that was my imagination at the time. How do I know it was Kevin? The prints of his heavy duty snow boots outside my front door and new tracks in the driveway going in an out when I got up. Kevin didn't knock and he didn't say anything, but I did hear noises at the door, probably Kevin trying the knob and finding it locked. He knows I don't lock the back door, but it was evidently not important or he would have come into the house across the brand new welcome mat I put out to keep his wet and muddy boots off my living room carpet. None of that had anything to do with the 3 knocks on the door.
When I lived at the cottage in the Springs the knocks sounded on a wooden door. I have only 1 wooden door here; all the others are glass. The knocks I heard this morning were 3 knocks on a glass door. I know my mind keeps working when I am asleep (it has to keep the body running [digesting, breathing, pumping blood, etc.] even though I'm resting). I do think my mind is sufficiently advanced to be able to differentiate the sounds of knocking on wood and on glass, but that would take a level of sophistication that seems like shooting fish in a barrel with a Howitzer. Too much effort for too little return. Something else is definitely going on.
Being me, the first thing I imagine is a warning that someone is coming to force me out of my house or tell me someone is dead. Neither is the case, but my default setting is always trouble and always my fault or related to me. Yes, me living in a me-centric universe. It has to mean something, but for the life of me I cannot imagine what.
Knowing what I do about alien abductions (yes, I've read Whitley Streiber's books and watched the X-Files. Like Mulder, I sort of believe, but not for the reasons you might think), believing that there is something in my brain or DNA to interest an alien to abduct me many times over the past 7 or so years, and probably the reason for my wanderlust and constant moving about for the better part of my life, even if I have to discount that my father was in the Army and we were deployed to various bases around Europe and Central America as well as the United States since I was 10 months old. Maybe that is where the books and stories I've written in my head have disappeared to. That's another story for another ride into the depths of the abyss that is my mind.
Or maybe it is my clairvoyance, specifically my precognitive abilities, surfacing to let me know something or someone is coming. And it had better not be who I think it is because he will not get a better answer from me now -- or ever.
Whatever is going on, if anyone has any suggestions, other than the ones touched on above, let me know. I'd like to know. You know what I always say: Knowledge is wasted when it isn't shared.
That is all. Disperse.
