#$%#$%&%^% Dog!

Mike will be working late again tonight. Last night was awful… he didn’t come in until after 11 and as you’ve read before, I am a HUGE chicken after dark, especially when I am by myself. Worse yet, I am at my mom’s house. That means that there are all sorts of noises and things that happen at night that I am just not used to. Then there are the dogs, these dogs will bark at MOTHS, no joke.

Fright #1

Around 8pm a business associate of my mother’s called. I dutifully took a message and told him she was out of town until next week. Half-way through our conversation, the phone dies. Assuming it is just the crappy cordless my mom has (for some reason she can’t get a quality telephone to save her life) I put it back on the charger and went to the kitchen for the other phone. When I picked up the kitchen phone all I heard was static blaring in my ear.

Being the calm, rational person I am, naturally I assume that some freak has cut the phone lines. Panicking I call my husband (on my cell phone) and start babbling on about the phones, static, etc. when the phone rings again… which I might add, scared the you-know-what out of me. Don’t think that for a split second I didn’t get an image of some guy hiding in the garage or bushes outside tapping into the phone line. ;o) I pick up and it is the same guy from before. I tell my husband I’ll call him back and I finish the conversation on the land line.

Fright #2

The baby fell asleep around 9:30 and I went around turning on lights in what I felt were strategic places around the house. I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that if you turn on TOO many lights the only thing people can see is YOU from the outside looking in… know what I mean?

There I was in the office blog surfing when the motion sensor activated light on the front porch comes on. Now, at first I assumed it was a neighborhood cat. Until the dogs started looking UP (about the height of an adult) through the glass in the front door (glass in a front door… now there is an idea with pure aesthetics and NO sense of security behind it) and began to bark their freaking heads off.

I called my husband (from the cell again) to ask if he was outside (hoping that maybe he had come home early). No such luck. For a moment I was just frozen, trying to figure out which one of the windows I could casually peak through without being seen and without having to cross in front of the doors. I looked outside and no one was there. Fortunately, the barking didn’t wake the baby up either…

Fright #3

My mother usually comes in and out of the house via her garage and connecting laundry room. Being slightly paranoid, I had locked the garage door and closed the laundry room door as well. Molly, the cocker spaniel, with her keen hearing and love of vocal expression, usually hears my mom coming in before she can even turn the handle on the garage door. So last night, I hear Molly start to make her excited noise, I looked over and there she was at the laundry room door wagging her tail and staring at the door knob. This dog is smart enough to hear a moth fly across the front yard but can’t manage to figure out that my mom won’t be back for another 4 days?!!?!?!?

I crept over and stood at the laundry room door, held my breath, and listened…

nothing.

Not a peep, not a creak, not a sound.

It was about that time that something occurred to me. The SIDE DOOR to the garage was probably unlocked…

I should backtrack and say that yesterday was an OFF day for me. Maggie and I went with Mike to do an appraisal across town, when we came back I had to carry Maggie and a few other things into the house. I brought Maggie inside, got her situated and remembered that I had left a few things in the car. Not wanting Molly to butt the garage door open, I shut it completely behind me. Coming back inside with my arms full, I realized that the door was LOCKED from the inside (security freak that I am, I had apparently pushed the button ##$%%&#). So I had to go out through the side, around to the back to get into the house.

Later, standing outside the laundry room door and holding my breath, I couldn’t recall if I had gone back OUT the garage and relocked the side door again… I tried to comfort myself by remembering that I had locked the garage door that leads into the laundry room, deadbolt and all.

What seemed like 10 minutes later - with no unusual sounds, I took a deep breath and walked away from the laundry room door. That’s another policy of mine… I NEVER, NEVER go check things out… that’s how the chick in the movies ALWAYS gets it.

!!#$%%&$%^% dog!!!