I like almost everything about our house, but I hate that most of our windows are painted shut. This includes the three windows in my bedroom. I think that they’ve been painted shut for a very long time, because vines have managed to grow up through the slots where the ropes used to be (you know the old windows on old houses that used rope pulleys to raise up and down?), and every so often, I have to do some hedge-trimming, only inside the house. This is one of those things that is quite disturbing if dwelt upon for very long. When vines start coming in through one’s windows, slowly growing across the walls and ceilings and furniture (well, they could!), it’s hard to sleep at night without feeling like you might be strangled to death by an ivy vine before morning. Some things which seem so harmless when encompassed by the giant realm that is nature are in fact much more threatening once they’re beneath your own roof.
But the main reason that painted-shut windows make me sad is that one of my favorite things to do is to go to sleep listening to the rain. These days, I only notice the rain if the thunder wakes me up, and I listen very closely for it. It seems unfair, because with our house being as old as it is, the moisture gets in anyway. The other way I can tell that it is raining is that all of our floor mats, and sometimes even my bed, become noticeably damp during weather like this. It isn’t exactly like sleeping on a sponge. But almost.