A Dark and Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night… (No really, it actually was.) Chester and I had been cooped up in the house most of the afternoon, so we decided to go out for dinner. By the time we finished dinner and stopped for some frozen yogurt on the way home, it was, as weather reports predicted, getting very windy. We dodged a number of tree branches that had already fallen in the streets. As we rounded the corner toward our house we were rocking out (appropriately) to “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions. I was telling Chester that my dance team did our competition routine to the song when I was a freshman in high school. He was hanging on every word as I told him how cool we were for performing to the Scorpions while all the other teams selected upbeat, squeaky-clean, pop songs and oldies. (Actually I don’t think he was listening to me at all and, if he was, he probably didn’t believe the part about how cool we were. He did like the song though, so that was encouraging.)

We started to make the turn into our driveway and immediately something did not compute. “Here I am, rock you like a hurr . . . what the heck . . . ?!” There was a giant piece of plant life where there had not been one before. Was it an enormous, spontaneous hedge? A spur-of-the-moment shrubbery? No, neither of those options made sense. Pretty quickly my brain turned off the Scorps and got down to the serious business of figuring out what was going on in my yard. It was our tree – or at least a huge piece of it – fallen across our front yard and into neighbor Carol’s driveway. I told Chester to stay put, jumped out of the car, and rushed toward Carol’s house to make sure her car was not squished under the tree. En route, I clothes-lined myself on some sort of cable – one end was still attached to the corner of our roof; the other end was pinned under the tree. (The good news is that Carol’s car was not.)

I froze. My parents instilled in me a very healthy respect for electricity. By the time I was a toddler, I was pretty sure electrical sockets were portals to all the evils of hell. Despite my fear of electricity, I seem to always find myself tangling with it. Like the time our basement flooded and I realized, as I was standing knee deep in sloshing water, watching the freezer begin to float by, that it was still plugged in. My immediate reaction was to jump aboard the floating freezer to get out of the water and reach for the power cord to yank it out of the wall. I have no idea if this was the best course of action, but it turned out alright. (The basement flooding was not alright, but I did not end up getting electrocuted, so I’m counting it as an ultimate win.)

This time I backed slowly away from the cord and noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that another loose end was dangling in the street, whipping in the wind. By this time Chester had gotten out of the car and retreated to porch, where a large gust of wind lifted our scary, life-sized Halloween skeleton out of the chair he was lounging on and sent him flying through the air, boney arms outstretched toward Chester. “MOM!” Chester screamed. A creepy black-feathered wreath flew off the door and a piece of fake bloodied fabric sailed away to who knows where. Grave stones and gargoyles were clattering down all over the place. A stick hit me in the face. Or maybe it was a bone from our front yard graveyard. It was like Night of the Living Dead, Twister, and Deadliest Catch all at the same.

From the relative safety of the house (I say relative because we all know zombies and tornados will not be stopped by a 1925 craftsman), I decided my first order of business was… Wait. First of all, does anyone care to venture a guess, at this point in the story whether Matt was home for this apocalyptic evening or in some distant land? (Spoiler alert…. Not home.) So… my first order of business was to call him in China or Dubai or wherever the hell he was. I honestly don’t know. The relevant fact was that he was not here and, I’m starting to suspect, doing this on purpose. It is common knowledge that the list of domestic disasters for which Matt has conveniently been halfway around the world is too long to detail here. In case you’re just tuning in – broken hot water heater/flooded basement, broken furnace/coldest week of the year, kaput sewer line/flooded bathroom, innumerable flat tires, violent Chester puke-fests, mysterious Chester rashes, Chester head injuries followed by all night visits to ER. You get the idea. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that the day after Big Blow-pocalypse, our neighbor Randy decided we need a block watch warning for whenever Matt is traveling. Some sort of alarm that sounds and sends each resident a text message that includes a little “danger” emoticon and says, “Batten down the hatches everyone! Matt is out of the country!”

So anyway, I called Matt. (I like the way he can tell now, just by the way I say his name when he answers the phone, that something is wrong.) Between my describing the scene to him, neighbor Carol’s son coming home and giving the cable a few ill-advised yanks to hold it up to his face in the dark, and Chester realizing that his iPad didn’t have a connection, we determined that it was not a live power line, but the cable line. So that was good. (Unless you’re Chester. He feels that being deprived of an internet connection is akin to a heinous form of torture.)

And so, since there was nothing more to do until morning, I began the saga of calling Comcast to report the snapped cable line and ensuing outage. The nice customer service man kept me on hold for 45 minutes “running diagnostics.” Now I’m no cable genius, but I’m pretty sure I had accurately diagnosed the problem. I kept trying to explain … “No, wait… I don’t need diagnostics… I know what’s wrong! No… wait… there’s a giant tree down in my front yard. Yes, a tree... It’s on top of the cable. The other end is dangling in the street.” Just about the time I was sure I was getting through to him, he’d ask questions about my equipment, whether or not things were turned on, and then kindly say, “Ma’am I’m just finishing up some additional diagnostics, please hold.” Finally they were able to “diagnose” that I needed a service guy to come to the house. Brilliant.

After the wind, and tree drama, and flying skeletons (not to mention, worst of all, a night with no Netflix), Chester was scared to death and insisted on sleeping with me. Between his version of sleeping, which feels more like a mixed martial arts brawl than it does sleeping, worrying about what else was going to come down in the continued howling wind, and trying to figure out what to do about the tree in the morning, I didn’t sleep much.

Sunday morning dawned, still somewhat drizzly, but no more wind. After filling up on coffee, feeding Chester breakfast, and setting him up with an old school DVD (Oh the horror!), I bundled up and headed outside, convinced that my Southern Oregon roots would serve me well. After all, I spent my entire childhood playing in forests while my dad cut firewood, and traipsing around our wooded property while he cleared and burned brush. “I can do this!” I told myself. Granted, I’m somewhat scarred given that these childhood scenarios nearly always ended with vast quantities of blood and trips to the ER. My dad was either chain-sawing his knee-cap, or nearly setting himself on fire, or impaling his leg on a pitchfork. No matter; I wasn’t going to be using a chainsaw or a pitchfork – I was safe! (In fact, I don’t own a chainsaw, but I will admit that when I went to the hardware store to obtain more yard waste bags, I ventured down the chainsaw aisle and gazed longingly like it was a wall of Louboutins.)

I rummaged around in the garage, came up with a handsaw and some heavy duty clippers, and set to work lumberjacking the hell out of that tree! I sawed; I clipped; I ripped; I pulled; I stuffed bags and bags and bags of yard waste. I felt like Paul Bunyan, minus Babe the Blue Ox. About seven hours after I started, with nothing more than my handsaw and clippers, the tree was gone, except for a seven or eight foot section of trunk. My neighbor and his friend came over with a little electric chainsaw (it didn’t look nearly as dangerous as my dad’s giant ones, but I still stayed clear) and reduced what was left to a pile of firewood-sized logs. I filled our big yard waste container, our neighbor’s yard waste container, two additional standard garbage barrels, and something like 17 or 18 yard waste bags.

By the end of the day, I could barely move. Everything hurt – my back, my legs, my arms, and especially my hands and wrists. I have a split in my thumb and my hands are still too sore to grip anything very tightly, but I didn’t clip any fingers off or saw into any portion of my body. And given that likelihood is definitely in my genes, I’m counting this as another win.

The yard waste guys came Monday morning and hauled everything but the chopped up logs away. They said they can take those next week if I tie them together in small bundles. I’m hoping if I put a “Free firewood” sign on the pile, someone will take them off my hands before then. In the meantime, I’m listening to the cable guy working away on the porch, nursing my aching body, and dreaming of chainsaws and designer heels, in that order amazingly.

The Boogie Man

I’m tired. Not just a little tired, but really tired. I know this is not unique. Pretty much everyone I know is some degree of tired these days; it seems like most of us are burning the candle at both ends – juggling too many things and just trying to retain sanity and stay awake until bed time. Normally the fatigue level of a typically busy life is manageable, but sometimes it crosses over into something else. After a month of conferences, and late work nights, and school starting, and soccer practices, and single parenting, and just WAY too little sleep, I’m there. I’m bone-weary, muddle-brained, zombie-eyed tired.

There is always one dead-give-away sign that I’ve crossed over into this overly-tired territory – well, one sign besides the weary bones, non-functioning brain, and zombie eyes. When I’m really, ridiculously tired, I become oddly paranoid. I start attributing weird explanations to things I actually see and hear, as well as to things I only think I see and hear. In my mind there is some sort of Boogie Man lurking in every situation – murderous Boogie Men, thieving Boogie Men, dangerous wild animal Boogie Men!

Once, I became convinced that a pack of wild, rabid coyotes had gotten into our basement, upending boxes and furniture. As it turned out, the hot water heater had broken and flooded the basement. The boxes weren’t so much upended as they were floating. In this case, I would have preferred the wild, blood-thirsty animals.

Then there was the time that, while rocking Chester to sleep, I kept hearing a ringing phone. It rang and rang and then stopped, and then rang and rang and then stopped. No one ever answered. After putting Chester to bed, I spent a good half-hour tip-toeing around the house, stopping in various spots, listening intently. I was absolutely certain the ringing was coming from our basement. Clearly a serial killer that would come to be known far and wide as The Cell Phone Psycho was in my house, waiting to strike. This was the only logical explanation. Surprisingly, that was not the case. It was my musician neighbor, having returned home from a holiday gig dressed as an elf, attempting to find her lost cell phone. I got roped into helping her look for it and found it, in the snow, under the front driver’s side tire of her car. Now honestly, isn’t the Cell Phone Psyhco explanation more plausible than an elf’s lost phone?

This morning, as I was washing my breakfast dishes, I saw, in my peripheral vision, a large, dark figure move across the window in the back door. I froze and slowly turned my head to look more closely. Whatever it was had moved out of sight. It could have been a bird or maybe a cat walking on the deck railing, but those are the likely explanations, and when I’m tired, my mind does not default to likely explanations. What is far more plausible to my exhausted brain is that a crazed, violent criminal is in my backyard. I mean, it’s a lovely, sunny Friday morning. I’ve just returned from yoga, and I’m washing a glass. It only makes sense that it’s a psycho murderer, right? Right. So I end up creeping around my house, peeking out windows, around edges of blinds, trying to be as quiet as I can, because if I’m super-quiet then maybe the crazy man in my backyard won’t break in and kill me.

Finally I decided I was being ridiculous and that it really WAS probably a bird or a cat. I must have had a moment of real, clear, non-ridiculous thinking because I even got in the shower, and everybody knows you wouldn’t DARE get in the shower with a crazed killer roaming around, casting shadows in your backyard. So I took my shower and everything was fine – no Norman Bates, no creepy Bernard Herrmann score. I was even to the point of chuckling at myself, until I turned off the water, pulled back the shower curtain, and reached for my towel. There it was… writing in the steam on the bathroom mirror! I froze mid-reach, my heart pounded, my mind raced, I squinted at the writing. What did it say?! “Redrum?!” Oh my God, did it say “Redrum?!” I couldn’t quite make it out. The only explanation was that the post-breakfast shadow actually was a murderer who snuck across my deck, waited for me to get in the shower, broke into the house and then quietly crept into the bathroom to write a creepy message in the steam on the bathroom mirror. And now, at any moment he would spring out and get me. Never mind that I have an 8 year old son who consistently insists on putting his sticky little hands on and in everything. In fact, just last night I caught him swirling his finger around in a side of ketchup in a manner I reserve only for attempting to retrieve chunks of delicious pineapple from Mai Tais in Hawaii. It couldn’t have possibly been him writing on the mirror! No way. That’s simply crazy, outlandish thinking.

My all time favorite was actually not me, but my very tired husband, being paranoid. I like to call it the Great Toilet Paper Heist and I’ll probably get into trouble for writing about it because, to this day, my very tired husband does not find the story nearly as amusing as I do. The Great Toilet Paper Heist occurred when Chester was toddler-aged. He still wasn’t sleeping through the night or any later than about 5:00 a.m. and we were deliriously tired. It was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and we had returned from Target with a bunch of typical Target stuff – paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products, diapers, etc. and were in the process of putting it all away. I was bustling around and Matt stopped me to ask where I’d put the toilet paper he had left at the foot of the stairs. I told him I hadn’t done anything with the toilet paper and attempted to continue along my way. He asked me if I was sure. I assured him I was.

“You probably already took it upstairs,” I said.

“No, I didn’t!” he whispered, his eyes darting back and forth.

I tried to speak in a normal voice, but was immediately shushed.

“Why are we whispering?” I asked.

“Because someone is in the house,” he hissed. “Someone has got to be in the house, I DID NOT move the toilet paper from the stairs!”

“So you think someone broke into the house and stole the toilet paper?” I attempted to clarify . . .  “While we were here?”

“YES!!! Or moved it!”
“Moved it?” I quietly and incredulously inquired.

Turns out, there was no emboldened toilet paper thief, which is really kind of disappointing when you think about it, because that’s some good stuff. The kind of stuff you can’t possibly make up; unless of course you’re really, really, ridiculously tired.    

The good news is, I managed to escape and get to work this morning, but I’m pretty sure the killer is still hiding in my house, lurking, waiting to write on the mirror again, to leave a closet door open, to stop the washing machine after I’ve started it, or to hide something important. That’s what Boogie Men do.  

It’s not a fire . . . b#@ch! (Or, “How a very hot shower turned me into Jesse Pinkman”)

So, I had kind of a bad morning. Nothing terrible happened; definitely first world problems, but still not good. I live in a “charming” old house. In addition to its old house charm, it has old house issues, which I’m pretty sure I’ve covered in past blog posts – sliver-prone wood floors, bizarre and malfunctioning fixtures, ugly kitchen cabinets, peeling plaster, and plumbing issues that have created permanent psychological trauma, just to name a few. (I didn’t even write about the recent basement flooding as it was simply too painful to rehash.)

Another issue is lack of ventilation in the upstairs bathroom. Unless you count the nearly century old windows that you can pretty much feel the wind whistling right through at any given moment. Unfortunately that doesn’t provide enough ventilation to keep the whole second floor of the house from steaming up when someone takes a particularly hot shower. That “someone” is always me. I can’t help it; I love hot showers. Anything short of nearly scalding is too cold for me. And, while our house is desperately in need of updates in almost every possible area, the one exception is safety. The architect in the house is nothing if not life-safety-oriented. We have top-notch smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in nearly every room, hallway, nook, and cranny.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for safety. But the combination of zero bathroom ventilation and my penchant for super hot showers makes the upstairs hallway “smoke detector” actually a “steam detector” disguised as a smoke detector. On an ideal day I remember to take the thing down before I get into the shower. On a good day, I don’t bother taking it down, but firmly close the bathroom door, which generally (but not always) prevents the steam detector from going off. On a not-so-good day I forget taking it down AND closing the door, and it begins going off once I’m out of the shower and mostly dried off.

Today was not an ideal day. It was not a good day, nor was it a not-so-good day. Today was a bad day. Today I neglected to take the steam detector down and I forgot to firmly close the bathroom door. As a result (and because the steam detector hates me), it started going off about halfway into my shower when I was all soapy and covered with shampoo and home alone. 

This is a new-fangled “smoke” detector that not only emits eardrum-bursting, head-splitting alarms, but alternates the evil sounds from hell with an obnoxious female voice that periodically declares, “Fire. Fire. Fire.” Despite being subjected to the most irritating, panic-inducing sounds in the world while in a vulnerable situation, I stayed calm. I rinsed off as quickly as I could and then gingerly stepped out of the charming old claw-foot tub – that desperately needs refinishing – so as to avoid injury. (Did you know that the most common place in the home for serious injuries and even deaths is the bathroom? That’s right; safety first, people!)

Once I felt confidently not-so-much-dry-as-non-slippery, I raced through the deafening cavern of sound that was my hallway into Chester’s room to retrieve a kiddo-sized chair on which to stand to reach and remove the blaring device. Typically once removal is achieved, I wrap the wretched thing securely in a t-shirt, a jacket, a pair of jeans – any clothing item that is definitely not mine and toss and/or stuff it angrily into a closet that is also not mine. I hate its small electronic guts and I will have it nowhere near me.

Typically removal is quick and easy – one small twist and down the steam detector comes. Today was not typical. I twisted . . . nothing. I turned . . . nothing. I pulled . . . nope. I twisted, turned, and pulled in all manner of twisting, turning, pulling combination, but it would not budge. At all.

I spent a good 15 minutes standing naked, wet (but not slippery) and progressively angrier on a tiny toddler chair attempting endless variations of twisting, turning, and pulling before a strange thing happened . . . I inexplicably turned into Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. I think maybe it was the annoying female voice saying “Fire, Fire, Fire” every few seconds that especially pissed me off, but I started yelling at the smoke detector like I was in a life or death argument with Walter White about who lost the keys to the RV meth lab . . .

“Stop. Stop, stop, stop . . .” I begged. “Stop it . . .

. . .

. . . Bitch!” (It felt surprisingly good to throw that in, so I really went for it.)

“STOP!!!! . . . .Bitch!”

“Come down . . .Bitch!”

“It is NOT a fire . . . Bitch!”

“It’s a shower . . . Bitch! A SHOWER!!!”

“NOT A FIRE . . .

 . . . BITCH!”

And suddenly . . . silence. It worked! My steam detector speaks Jesse Pinkman! I was bewildered and thrilled and also now deaf, but who cares because it finally stopped. Sweet Jesus, Vince Gilligan, and Aaron Paul, it stopped! 

I can’t wait to try speaking Jesse Pinkman to other malfunctioning household items. Sink clogged? “Unclog, bitch!” Bam, unclogged. Toilet overflowing? “Stop overflowing, bitch!” Done. Furnace not working? “I need heat, bitch!” Ask and you shall receive. Based on this morning’s experience, I’m almost certain this will work.

I suppose it’s possible that my horrible smoke detector finally stopped blaring for some other reason. Like maybe the steam finally cleared up enough for it to stop detecting it? Or perhaps it screeched itself out and just quit from sheer exhaustion? Possibly, but I think it’s far more likely that my smoke detector is a big Breaking Bad fan . . .bitch.