Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Hunting (Hitting) Deer and Coming Out of Our Shell

           I've heard a lot about the "deer in the headliht" look over the years, but I experienced it firsthand last week.  On Thanksgiving Eve, I had just come over a hill when I saw a deer in the middle of the road.  I tried to slow down and yelled in my head for it to get out of the way. It made it a couple feet directly into my lane before turning and staring at me. I couldn't believe it just stood there and looked at me. It could have run back and forth accross the road at least a couple of times in the time it took me to come up to it. My last thought before I hit it was, "God help me!" I could just see the deer  bouncing onto our windshield and shattering my visibility, causing me to carene into the ditch beside us and flip the van. My thoughts get pretty elaborate. Instead, I hit the deer squarely,  watched it bounce forward into the ditch and try to scramble to its feet. I pulled off, put my hazards on, and was determined to see if the deer was seriously hurt. I saw the deer behind me sitting on the road and amazingly enough very little damage had been done to the van. There wasn't any blood, but what appeared to be excrement.  Poor thing! I scared the poop out of it. It quickly hobbled back into the woods. When I got back in the van, my neice (who had joined us for a sleepover) kept exclaiming that I had knocked one of its legs off. I got out again to search for its amputated limb, but there was nary a leg in sight. I was hoping that if the deer was hurt badly that Charles could come put it out of its misery, and we could have some deer meat to boot. I wouldn't want to waste a deer. Charles joked with me the next day about "hunting" for deer with the van.  When we went to my brother's for Thanksgiving,  we had a lot to be thankful for. We also laughed so much and so hard (mainly over an app called "Elf Yourself" that my neice used with our nine month old), that my abs hurt for two days.
          As I shared a little over a week ago,  I was praying for friends and to make some new ones. Well, God heard my prayers and brought me a whole week of blessings. I found out I won a book (by Beth Moore!) giveaway on one of my favorite blogs (Pruning Princesses). I had met the author when we both helped launch "No More Perfect Moms". The next day, I was so encouraged by another good friend's blog about the rough day she had (another favorite: By Prayer and Petition). Then on Sunday, I made a new friend who just moved to the area...and just started homeschooling (and has three children with ages around my three youngest). I've made several friends in the nursing room at our church. Does rocking and feeding bond you to other people besides your babies? I'm beginning to think it does.
          More sea monkeys are hatching, and the ducklings have been moved to our garage. The final egg failed to pip, but we are grateful for the nine that did hatch. The oldest are beginning to get poky feathers,  and hopefully in another month or so they can free range like the rest of our fowl.
          Charles helped hang a lot of things (like curtains) over the Thanksgiving break. We also rearranged some furniture,  causing one wall's imperfections to be exposed. As Charles was pointing out all the holes left in the wall from the previous owner, the girls chimed in the there was a "pip in the wall! Something is trying to break out!" It really did look like the duck eggs had. We all had a good chuckle over that; but I do think that our life is beginning to emerge here, although we might not be completely out of our shell yet.

No comments:

Post a Comment