Still Nuts

I had a terrible time falling asleep last night, and I don’t think I fell fully asleep until about 3 in the morning. I’m fighting a little cold, and it always seems to get my sleep schedule out of whack. I’m sure that conking out on the couch for an hour earlier in the evening didn’t help, but I was hoping the “may cause marked drowsiness” cold medicine would knock me out. It didn’t.

And the problem was that I really was sleepy. I did all the stuff you’re supposed to do when you can’t sleep (except the warm milk, because ew) – I walked around for a while, I did other stuff, but then I’d be tired and I’d get back in bed and I couldn’t fall asleep.

So I was back in bed, tossing and turning, and I’d been hearing nuts hit the door and windows all night long and it hadn’t been bothering me much. But all of a sudden I heard what must have been an absolute flurry of nuts falling against the door downstairs. Like, a bucket of nuts. And it was so loud and so alarming that this time, I was SURE someone was breaking into my house.

All logic immediately left me. I was on my belly at this point, so I carefully slid the pillow out from under my head and off to the side, so I could press my ear flat against the mattress. Because that would TOTALLY make me hear the intruder better. So I lay there and listened and I didn’t hear anything. But the carpet downstairs is deep and quiet, so maybe I wouldn’t hear anything.

I had a brief, bizarre moment of wondering if my intruder would look in my fridge, and then I started thinking about the knife.

There’s a knife upstairs, see. A big-ass stabby knife. I didn’t put it there, but it was there when I moved in and everyone encouraged me to leave it where I’d found it in case anyone ever broke into my house, so I could get the knife and stab the fuck out of the person before s/he could hurt me.

My increasingly ridiculous train of thought went racing down a track kind of like this:

Okay. So maybe I should get the knife. But my door is closed; what if he’s outside the door at the top of the stairs, and when I open the door to get the knife, he’s there? Maybe I should have put the knife in my bedroom. SHIT. Okay, this is okay. The stairs are creaky so if he were coming up the stairs I would definitely hear it; there’s no way to come upstairs quietly. I’m not wearing shorts. Should I put my shorts on before I get the knife or is that wasting too much time? Should I just go in my underwear and get the knife and stab him? Do I have time to put on a bra, too? Could I really stab someone? If I go out to get the knife and he’s coming up the stairs can I just kick him at the top of the stairs and make him fall down to the bottom? Oh my god oh my god ohmygod.

And so on.

Finally I realized that in my hyperaware super mattress-enhanced listening mode, I hadn’t heard anything at all since the flurry of nuts. And I reminded myself that I didn’t hear any glass breaking, and that my back door has a very distinctive sound it makes when opening and that I didn’t hear that sound, so chances are the back door hadn’t been opened.

It was just breezy and 2 in the morning and there were nuts hitting the windows and duh, I totally wrote about them just that day, so I needed to chill already and go the hell to sleep and quit freaking out about a bunch of stupid nuts hitting the window.

After several minutes of similar mental talking-down, I managed to convince myself that really, they were just nuts, and then I still couldn’t go to sleep for another hour or so after that but finally, thankfully, I dropped off.

I seriously don’t know if it was the cold medicine or the insomnia or the fact that I’d just written about the nut thing yesterday, but it was majorly scary last night, and it seems majorly silly today.

Perhaps I am the nut.

9 Replies to “Still Nuts”

  1. This made me laugh, I’ve totally thought about the not-wearing-shorts-when-there-might be-an-intruder-thing before.

  2. LMAO! You are brave to want to use a big stabby knife in self-defense! I’m convinced that if I ever tried using a knife I’d totally flake and get myself hurt.

  3. I remember, years ago, going out onto my deck in my boxer briefs to confront two fighting cats. I was half-asleep, and remember thinking that I was totally unprepared for an actual intruder.

    The cats, happily enough ran away before I had to do anything with them.

  4. You are nuts. What’s a knife doing just outside your bedroom? If I was psycho I’d plant a knife just outside the bedroom door and sell the …okay, I can’t finish that thought without sounding like a psycho so I’m going to gently put that thread down and step away quietly.

    I think I saw a movie though where a girl wearing a teeshirt sans bra and panties was startled awake by a noise at the door and went to investigate. It may have been several movies, I don’t know.
    At least you’re not one of those girls. Who knows, you could have attracted the notice of your nut-throwing neighbor and actually invited danger to come for you.

    …okay, well that makes me sound dirty and I only meant funny in a totally different way. But, it’s not like I can do much to fix that part of my rep.

    I’m glad you’re not dead, Lorie. Feel free to report more on the freaking-out-in-bed stuff though. I mean, you know, it’s like the movies.

  5. furthermore, this was a really good update.

    i love when i can tell your writing is really FLOWING. i can hear you tripping over your own fingers in your haste to say what you are thinking.

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