Knocking before exiting

Every time I leave my house in the morning I do something strange. I knock on the front door before exiting. I know that sounds like a silly thing to do but it is actually something I do out of fear. I know that does not sound that it would protect me in anyway . It is something that I just started doing in the last couple of months. As you can probably guess there is a huge story behind it. Lucky for you I am going to tell you that story.

Let's start with the beginning. I start my day earlier than most people. I wake up between 1 and 4 in the morning. Basically I get up whenever my body loudly tells me it is done sleeping. I am not like normal people I do not stay home when I first get up. I like to go for walks early in the morning.I have two reasons for this. The first is I have a small dog named Bear who likes to come with me on my walks. Bear is a medium sized off white pomerian/. He is not a good walker around others. He likes to bark at other people and other dogs. So I like to go for my walks early in the morning when we have a lesser chance to running into other people. The second reason I go for walks so early morning is because of the diet program I am on. I have a garmin that I wear an the goal it has for me is to was 19,000 steps a day. If I have any hope of attaining that goal I have to get as many steps in the morning as I can. You maybe wondering how I can see to walk at 4am. The answer is I choose a well let path. I live not to far from downtown of my small town. They keep the street lights on at all times so it works perfectly for a 4 am walk. WE walk through dowtown to a small park that is also well lit. I have path that I take that is about 6.000 steps. On really good days I walk that path three times and get 13,000 steps in first thing in the morning

Bear gets very excited for these walks. He usually starts barking when he sees me put my shoes or jacket on. When he sees his dog leash he will jump on his hind legs until I put it on all while barking his head off. I usually try to quiet him because my husband is sleeping nearby. However after the incident I am about to tell you about I let him bark by the door when I am knocking on it. I am hoping his barking will make anything that hears it away.

I know you are probably wondering what in the world I am so afraid of when I walk out the door. I will tell you soon I promise. First let me tell you what I walk out onto when I walk out the door.

We have a large cement porch .It has a porch swing and two other chairs for sitting and watching the neighborhood. There is something interesting behind those two chairs. It is a big cat tower with a place for a cat to sleep in on top. This tower belongs to the princess of our porch our porch cat. Her name is David . The neighborhood kids called her that before we told them she was a she. She is a long haired siamese cat. She is loved by the our whole neighborhood. She frequently visits all the neighborhood kids including waiting with them at their bus top. She just sleeps and eats on our porch. If you are wondering if David is what I am so afraid of the answer is no. However, she is the reason why what I am afraid of comes.

Now that I have laid the background I am finally ready to tell you what causes me to knock on the door. The other thing that I do every morning as part of my diet program is weigh myself. I have to sink my weight into a app that I use. My bluetooth connection does not always work correctly. Our wifi is not the greatest in the world. I have found that sometimes if I move the scale out on the porch it will work. One fateful morning I was going to do this with bear following close behind. I opened the front door saw a frightening sight screamed and slammed the door shut.

What did I see that was so scary? An opossum eating David's cat food. Why is that so scary? As a pet owner I consider myself to be Bear's mother and I have to protect him. If he were to see that opossum he would try to get it. Bear could likely get hurt in the progress. When I peered out the front door window I saw that the opossum had ran away from all the noise. I decided not to worry about weighing myself that day. A hour or so later it was time to take Bear for a walk. That is when I started my knocking tradition. This time when I opened up the door I screamed again and then laughed. There was something at the door again. It was David wondering why in the world I was knocking on the door and not refilling her food dish.

Thankfully my knocking on the door before exiting has worked for keeping the opposum away. I have never seen it again on my porch. I did see a stray cat eating David's food once. My knocking on the door was successful in chasing it away . If you would would ask me a year ago if I knocked on the door before exiting I would say no that's a crazy thing to do. Perhaps, it is a crazy thing to do but it brings me peace of mind when I do it . That is all that really matters to me.