Awake My Soul

Here’s a fun little story for you. Last night, I got in bed around 11 and fell asleep around 11:45. I assume L feel asleep around the same time, but who knows. I was sleeping peacefully until 4:06. I woke up because I knew I was hearing something out of the norm, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I was pretty groggy, so I laid there listening, trying to make sense of what was going on. I was hearing something that sounded like material crumpling.

The noise stopped, so I took the opportunity to put on my glasses and get my bearings. This is what our nightstands look like:

My nightstand sits directly in front of a vent for the A/C/thermostat, and I keep a stack of magazines on the open shelf below the drawer. Occasionally, a magazine cover or page will ruffle and ripple with the breeze of the air coming from the vent, but that is usually much quieter than what I’d just heard. A few minutes later, the noise started again and it sounded like it was coming from under the bed or nightstand… definitely up close by our heads. And it was definitely something getting crumpled. I was pretty sure we didn’t have a robber hiding under our bed crumpling balls of paper, so I felt pretty confident that the noise-maker was of the unwanted animal variety. What’s a girl to do in a situation like this??? (It should be noted that I have a horrible imagination that totally goes off the deep end from time to time. It does not help that I saw When a Stranger Calls and When a Stranger Calls Back way too many times as a kid. The dude at the end of WASCB that’s painted to blend in with the wall at the end left an indelible impression on me and it STILL freaks me out. So of course there was a small- however improbable you may believe it to be- possibility that a man could have been disguised as carpet and waiting to grab our feet as soon as we got out of the bed.)

Obviously the answer is wake up your husband and scare the crap out of him. Here’s how I managed that! I wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy and that the noise was real. I’d only heard it twice, and in normal circumstances (read: not at 4:00 a.m. when the house is usually silent), crumpling paper/plastic/cellophane doesn’t scare me. Because I’m not a crazy person (usually). So L needed to wake up and hear it, too, just in case he could tell if it wasn’t an animal and it really was a scary man playing mind games with us by hiding under the bed and crumpling stuff in order to wake us up before murdering us with a stuffed animal machine, a la that crazy lady in that one season of Nip/Tuck (btw, I miss that show, but only the good seasons. I totally didn’t watch any of the final season). Anyway, in an effort to be as non-jarring as possible and NOT clue in the crumpling bandit to the fact that we were aware of its presence, I laid my hand on L’s chest and whispered that he needed to wake up and not make any noise and be very still. In hindsight, that would probably have scared the DAYLIGHTS out of me because I would immediately have thought there was some sort of imminent danger, like an intruder prowling around our hallway, but oh well. Luck was on L’s side and it was just something making noise under the bed. I quickly explained to L in the quietest. whisper. EVER. what was going on and that I needed him to hear what it was. And of course the noise didn’t start again for a full 6 minutes (during which time I’m sure L was thinking I was insane for waking him up to hear nothing). We listened to the noise a couple of times before turning on the light and actually speaking in normal inside voices. We agreed it must be a mouse, but then neither of us wanted to look under the bed (especially not me since it was on my side!). What was baffling both of us was the idea of why a mouse would be in our bedroom (SICK) and what in the world it was crumpling up.

And then I remembered something. For Halloween, we’d gotten a mixed bag of Hershey’s candy, and one of the varieties was little packets of Hershey’s kisses. There are roughly 3-4 kisses per packet. We still had a couple of those in January and one day I thought I wanted a little chocolate, so I grabbed a packet and was going to do something with it (eat it?) and I put it on my night stand instead because I got distracted by something else (probably something shiny). So fast forward a couple of days and I was vacuuming and knocked the nightstand with the vacuum and the packet of kisses fell off the table and under the bed, behind the bed skirt. I meant to pick them up but I forgot to, so I told L about it and we both agreed that had to be what the mouse was eating. The closest we got to looking under the bed was moving our pillows and peeking between the mattress and the headboard to see if we could spot anything. We saw a little bit of the Hershey bag, but what we could see didn’t look damaged and we didn’t see any fur. The possibility was still there that it was a man dressed as carpet and eating our old Halloween candy.

L asked if I wanted to go sleep in the guest room. I considered this but the way he phrased it didn’t indicate that he’d be joining me. Plus, that would mean a smaller bed AND that we’d have to change those sheets this weekend, too. I decided I’d rather be in the same room as him (I can’t even fathom what would happen if this scenario played out in a room where I was all alone. I would probably be dead or at least paralyzed with fear). L insisted that I was just going to keep freaking out all night at any sound, but I told him I’d just turn the TV on and put it on a sleep timer and fall asleep to that instead of dead silence punctuated by the sounds of a rodent candy party. So after more hemming and hawing on it, we stayed in the bed, turned on last night’s Gray’s Anatomy, and watched the entire episode. We were both too wired to sleep. Somewhere in the last 15 minutes or so of the episode, we heard our new bunk mate scampering in the wall and up into the attic or on the roof (I feel pretty confident that we’re unlucky enough to have this dude residing in the attic). We finally fell asleep sometime after 5:30, which made for a super-sleepy morning today.

L worked from home today because he’s been feeling nauseous every morning this week (pretty sure he’s pregnant) and today he actually did barf. Poor guy. He’s feeling better now, though, and he went out and bought a mess of traps and mouse/rodent bait and then set them all up all over the house and attic. We’ll be filling gaps in the floor and baseboards with foil tonight and this weekend.

What are YOUR exciting weekend plans???