Paranoid Humanoid

Behind my house, there are two trees that shade the patio area. One of them is a gigantic oak tree that was probably planted when God was a boy, and the other is some kind of nut tree, I think. The nut tree is smaller and grows inside the patio enclosure.

Do nuts grow on trees? I guess so, if you have walnut trees. Okay, strike that question. I’m an idiot.

Hey, actually I was just trying to figure out what kind of a nut tree the one inside the patio is, and it turns out that oaks are considered nut trees too, because of acorns. I’m a double idiot. In any case, it seems like the littler tree is a hazelnut or a butternut tree.

It’s nut time, evidently, because the acorns and the hazel-or-butter-nuts are falling from the trees along with some of the leaves. And sometimes, the falling nuts hit the windows or the back door. Sometimes it’s a soft hit, but sometimes if the wind is blowing it’s a loud hit. And every single time it happens, I just about jump out of my skin and become convinced that someone’s on the patio trying to break into my house. I’m a little jumpy.

So yeah, I hear the noise, and then I’m like OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? and then I’m like oh right, it’s a nut, and then ten minutes later it happens again. And again. And again.

Actually, I’m way jumpy. Because there’s also the matter of the dishwasher.

My front door’s a little sticky and when you finally pull it free, it makes a loud cracking noise. I can’t run the dishwasher when I’m home anymore, because at one point when it switches cycles, it makes this loud cracking noise that sounds exactly like my front door coming open. I only run it about once a week and I used to turn it on late at night before I went to bed, but I’d always be lying there trying to go to sleep and the cycles would switch, and I’d sit up like a shot and be freaked out. Sometimes I had to go downstairs and check all the locks, just in case. Now I just start the dishwasher as I’m heading out the door in the morning, because otherwise I’m going to have a heart attack from freaking out all the time.

And I used to think that every time I heard a back gate or a back door open that it was my back gate or my back door opening, but I’ve gotten more used to the schedules my neighbors keep and the specific sound of each neighbor’s back gate and back door. So that’s getting better, at least.

Now, if the stupid nuts could quit flinging themselves against my windows and door, I’d sleep a lot easier.