I May Never Know!

Yeah, my January 1st was rough all down to a poor sleep.  Which was due to being woken a lot during the night.

I had gone to bed around eleven, knowing I'd be close to awake if not fully awake when midnight hit and knowing that it's never quiet around here when the clock strikes twelve on New Year's Eve.

So I lay in bed, lights out, listening to the celebrations as the New Year rolled in.  I considered getting up to text a few people (my phone stays in the kitchen at night, charging) but chose to just stay in my own silence and contemplation.  And I tried to drift off to sleep.  The firework people (not a huge fan TBH) weren't all done by 12:01 so that stopped me from fully drifting off until who knows what.  But the next thing that woke me up was probably what messed with my sleep the most.

See my bedroom windows open to the parking lot area of my building.  For many years, I have woken VERY wide awake at noises that "weren't right".  It's strange how brains work but my brain can tell the difference between someone getting out of their car and walking to the back door and someone loitering or doing something in the parking area we'd rather they weren't doing.  And for years my brain would hear that "not right" noise and wake me up.  Most often with a huge surge of adrenaline anxiety and I'd get up and look out my window and often try to scare the person away with a yell or something.  Which then would spike my anxiety adrenaline even more and it would never be easy to get back to sleep, I'd often have to get completely up and try to calm down.  It might be another hour until I could even attempt to sleep.  Rarely, if ever,  did I call the police as it seemed more time efficient to "scare" someone off myself rather than wait for police to be able to arrive and risk a bad thing happening in that wait time.  But the adrenaline and anxiety were brutal and so in the last year or so I started to try to tell myself that it isn't my problem to fix.

I don't leave things in my car anymore after my car got broken into and I learned through that that if someone *wants* to silently break into my car, apparently they can.  And after the last set of break ins, we asked our building management to install security cameras and they did.  Not that I think it's a deterrent necessarily (maybe it is?) and I'm not even sure if the police looked at the footage at the last break in but the point is, I've tried to "teach" my brain that someone in our back lot is not my problem to fix.  And so for the most part, I'm able to either ignore or sleep through whatever noises might be not so great out back.

Or... maybe there has been less activity.  I don't honestly know.

But at some point once I'd mildly fallen asleep, I heard noises out there and they weren't right.

It sounded like someone going through those extra crinkly grocery bags (that we don't actually have anymore?) and I tried to ignore it but I was awake enough that I couldn't, but I also didn't want the adrenaline or anxiety surge so I tried to sleep but couldn't and I didn't know what was going on and "eventually" someone came in the back door (I heard it closing) and so I thought maybe it was a neighbour doing stuff and good thing I'd just left it be, right?

Except somehow this meant I wasn't able to fully sleep again that night and when morning rolled around I was wrecked.

But here's the point of this post..... There seems to be (I can't check it out, don't have the vision or binoculars) what could be a plastic bag on the roof of the parking area.  I saw it as soon as I looked outside.

Which begs the question.  What was going on that night?  Was someone going through plastics and then threw that item/bag up on the roof?  Mayyyybe.  Did an animal get into our trash and dig out this bag and carry it along the roof and make noise for a while and then leave it there?  Mayyyybe.  I mean, I suppose I could ask the building manager to look at the footage and tell me but we all know I'm not going to do that!

So something kept me up and awake on New Year's Night and on New Year's day there was something on the roof of my parking area that wasn't there the day before and that's all I know.  My current guess is that it was a human, but I'm lost if I can figure out why they'd throw something up on the roof.  There's no easy access, so it wouldn't be a good spot for "I'll hide this and come back later".  So maybe it was an animal?  But usually they make animal noises? (I'm pretty good at knowing raccoon noises for example.)

So, yeah, a rough January 1st for me, with a little weird mystery thrown in.  And I really have to wonder how long that thing will be up there.  No one goes up there as far as I know.  And I don't know what it is to know if it'll get blown down or away next big storm.  I guess we'll see, eh?

(Edited to add:  I woke up the morning after I wrote this, so the next day, and the thing was down.... not sure if pushed by animal or blown by wind, I slept through whatever, yay sleep!  Turns out it was a "paper lined with plastic" type tortilla chip bag so not sure that that was what woke me up after all - may not be related or maybe it's exactly related!)