A Frightening Night

So I will confess that I am about to tell a story in which I sound like a big, scaredy cat baby and that I was. It goes as follows...

It was about 9pm and the children were tucked away nicely in bed and Tyler was off at school. I was on the couch, watching "Parenthood" on my computer and making the invites for Steven's Birthday Party when all of a sudden I hear an alarming "creak" and I turn my head to see the door into the garage moving ajar.

Me being me, I immediately suffer a heart attack and picture the worst, especially when my brain remembers locking that specific door. I can just visualize some creepy "Criminal Minds" person staring at me at that moment, surprised to see me awake and determining his next move of attack.

Then I decide to be "rational" and I think that maybe Tyler was able to somehow open our noisy and loud garage door without me hearing it and maybe he's just messing around in his "man cave" fixing stuff and just not thinking to come in and say hello. So I yell out Tyler's name but my rationalization is unrewarded. No reply.

Wanting it so badly for it to be him, I decide to pick up my cell phone, walk into the kitchen (close to the knives of course because skinny old me would be such a threat with a slightly better than a butter knife, knife in my hand) and I call Tyler. Unfortunately he answers his phone, and I am assaulted with the sound of noisy students in the background and I know he's not the culprit but yet I ask anyways. Because that was my reason for calling.

After I blubber out what's happening, Tyler tells me to shut the door which of course I don't want to do because I can just imagine this terrifying person lunging at me the minute I go to shut it but I do it. And as I do it, I feel like the limping woman in Jurassic Park who has to run and shut the door before the Raptors get in. I was ridiculous. I ran at the door, shoved it shut and locked it so hard that the whole house shook.

And as I sit under my computer desk (yes, under it), with a knife (remember only slightly better than a butter knife) on one side of me and my cellphone on the other side, still working hard on the birthday invites (must be productive even when potential death looms close by), a memory comes to me. One that makes me feel ridiculous. Super dumb. There was this lovely poop incident in the tub before the children were tucked in. This lovely incident caused me to open that locked door to the garage and get gloves. And it was very likely in my hurriedness that I didn't shut the door properly. And it very likely that since it was such a windy day that very same door to the garage could have been merely affected by nature's elements. And not by some creepy psychopath that was trying to kill me.

Tyler was nice enough to offer me another solution when I called him up to explain to him my likely stupidity. "Maybe it's the crazy old lady who haunts our house."

"Not funny." was my aggravated reply.

I think I will make a point to shut that door more firmly from now on. And maybe buy some better knives...