Last night might have been my worst nights sleep in my life.  It was warm in the house, the bedroom window was open and the fan was running.

After working several hours at the computer I went to sleep with a headache from eye strain and was happy about my eating (of lack thereof) for the evening.  The last thing I said to Morton was, "Woohoo, we don't have to set the alarm" and I thought that I might actually manage to sleep in.  That would be about 7 am for me.

Now I'm just getting over a very bad throat and I want to say that I've never smoked in my life.  Second-hand from a lot of people, yes, but the only experience I had with cigarettes lefts me too scared to ever really try them.

It was when I was ten or eleven and a friend and I had snuck two cigarettes out of my mother's pack.  We decided the safest place to smoke them would be up at the pony barn where my shaggy black pony Suzy and her red baby Sunshine lived.

Once we were at the barn with a pack of matches and the two cancer sticks, we decided we need to be up on a pile of freshly stacked hay that my dad had sitting beside the barn.  It was going to be loaded into the hay loft later that day, so we were lucky it was sitting outside and we could keep an eye on the house as we lit up for the first time.

We both had a cigarette in our mouths and had both managed to get them lit and the match blown out.  I hadn't given a thought to the fact that we were sitting on a big pile of flammable hay that was going to be bedding and food for my ponies.  I was just thinking about how cool and grownup we looked holding these long white cigarettes in our little hands.

My friend told me I wasn't inhaling right.  She said that I need to suck on the end of the filter like a straw, then hold it and exhale.  She demonstrated and had the smoke come out her nose!  I think she must have done this before since both her parents smoked just like mine.

This time, on my second or third puff I did indeed suck it like a straw.  Something happened and I started choking, really choking, on this toxic puff.  The cigarette was dropped on the hay and there were flames all around us in an instant.

Just like out of a cartoon, the two of us stood in horror while the flames shot taller than my pony barn and even higher than the trees that sat on the fenceline of the pasture. 

In less than a minute there was just black smoking clusters of charred hay laying everywhere on the ground.  One of the trees that was closest had some leaves on fire and we both did a mad dash to use the bucket that I normally watered to ponies with to put out the fire.

Neither of us ever smoked when we grew up so I guess we learned a lesson.  We never confessed to our parents and my dad just assumed that the bad boys down the road set the hay on fire.

Last night I kept waking up with the smell of smoke in the apartment, cigarettes to be exact.  With my throat already sore I couldn't figure out where this was coming from or why.  The only window open faces our neighbors porch and they appeared to be in bed.

Laying back in the bed after searching for a ghost-smoker in the apartment, I almost jumped out of my skin when a man's voice spoke just like he was standing next to the bed...and it didn't have the Scotttish accent of Morton.

It turns out our neighbors must have been having a quiet inside party where everyone had to go out to smoke.  They would lean against our windowsill, which is what this guy was doing, and my little fan that had been pulling in the cool night air was now bringing horrible second hand smoke inside and blowing it on me.

This continued for several hours, happening about every fifteen minutes.  Finally, zombie-like at five a.m. I headed for the bathroom with thoughts of just going and sleeping on the couch.  I was going to pop back in the bedroom to tell Morton and when I stepped in our bedroom it really smelled like an ashtray and the smokiest bar on the planet, minus the bad jukebox music.

Heading to the window there was a flannel shirt filled with a smoker leaning against it.  He was chatting away to a female who was puffing away on her cigarette.  They were both less than two feet away from my bed with really just a screen seperating us. 

Reaching up to pull the window down I learned it was stuck.  Nothing in this house really works right, why should the windows close?  Leaning down on the bed I whispered to Morton and asked if he would close the window.

Morton pulled the curtains back, while in his underwear I might add, then says to the guy and girl, "Would you mind going around the side of the house to smoke, it's coming right in our window" and to my shock, the man apologizes, understands Morton and even calls him sir.  Wow!  Who would have thought that simple manners and communication can work!

From this point I dozed in and out, window shut and fan on, for the next few hours.  A very unrestful night but maybe an opening line to actually talk to one of our neighbors.  We have clusters of them living over us, around us on each side and behind us...not ideal but it might be nicer if we all at least said "hello" once in a while.

Today, this beautiful Sunday morning, I'm heading off to a local park on my bicycle to take part in a lovely photo shoot.  I can say it's going to be really beautiful because I'm going to be on the backside of the camera, taking pictures of my lovely Alexander in his kilt!  Just one year old and already following in his Scottish father's footsteps of wearing the kilt.

Have a wonderful day and make sure you get your exercise in, talk to a neighbor and make at least one fabulous little change in your life.

Priscilla