A Thump And A Rattle In The Night

I have always been a little, lets say, nervous when it comes to sounds in the dark. I can't count the number of times I've jerked my husband from a sound sleep with the question, "What was that?" He usually mumbles something like, "A car door slamming" and goes back to sleep quickly, while I lay there with wide eyes and pulse pounding.

I also have always subscribed the the theory of a closed closet door keeps the monsters in (thanks Monsters Inc for trying to shatter that!) and never letting your hand or foot hang over the edge of the bed since that is too tempting a treat for monster. I never fall asleep without pulling at least the sheet up to my ears, keeping most of my person under a cover for monster protection.

It's so very weird that the little rituals I went through as a child are still with me as an adult!

The other night started my first night alone on my husbands 3 night business trip. I was fine. Totally fine. I've done the alone thing so many times, it's not a big deal. As I crawled into bed, I decided to not watch TV before I went to sleep. I usually do, but the remote is broken so that means I'd have to snuggle down, get comfy, watch a rerun of Seinfeld, then break the warm seal of bed covers to turn off the TV. I was too tired for that. I rolled over to the closet side of the bed to turn off the light.

As I was immersed in darkness, I heard it.

Thump! Door knob rattle!

The closet!!! Something in the closet was trying to get out!!!

The light goes back on. The TV goes on. I carefully got up and pressed on the closet door to make sure it was closed and latched tightly. Nothing in the world could make me open the closet door. I just needed to make sure it was secure.

When my nephew J sleeps over, he gets a special bed made up on the floor right beside my bed. One time I could hear him still awake so I went in to check on him. I got down on the floor next to him and asked if he was okay. He looked over at me and said, "There's a cat under your bed."

I don't own a cat. And to my mortification I could not look under the bed. Best case it was a mouse with beady little eyes. Worse case it was monster with glowing red eyes. Either way, I did not check it out. I laughed, ruffled his hair and said he was silly. It was time for sleep.

And, probably, it was better to not look under the bed.

I applied that advise to myself. It was probably better to not look in the closet.

A Slug In Disguise

My husband was getting ready for bed last night, putting on his "good dreams" sweat pants (we are testing a theory that he will sleep better with less crazy dreams if he is warmer!), when badness happened.

My husband took a step towards his nightstand and made a "yikes, holy cow, what the heck!" sort of yelp. I sat up immediately and looked over the edge of the bed. A spider? Is it a big spider? Usually my fearless husband only yelps when he is startled by a spider.

"It's a slug! On me!" he said. A slug? I lean over to take a closer look. Uh, that's not a slug.

"It's dog poop!!!" he yelled. "Sarah!!!!"

As he hobbled out of the room to wash his feet, I collapse on the bed in laughter. If I was a better wife, I would have cleaned up the mess on the floor, but I was too weak from laughing so hard. I kept hearing his surprised yell, then him saying it was a slug, and I would start laughing even harder. I had tears in my eyes!

I thought I was under control when he came back in. I asked if he needed to take a shower and he said no, he'd scrubbed the crap out of his feet. I started to giggle. Yep, I said, you better have.

After everything was cleaned, and we were in bed settling in, my husband said, "I'm not sure, but a slug might have been worse."

I believe he fell asleep to the sound of my laughter.

I Like Being His Old Lady

When I was younger, motorcycles were the things of scary biker gangs and dangerous criminals. As I grew up, I learned that not every motorcycle guy was a member of Hells Angels....but motorcycles were for a certain type of people.

Then my husband bought a bike, and suddenly we are that type of people.

I was pretty nervous the first time I got on the back of his bike. There wasn't a sissy bar, yet, and I felt like I would slide right off. I didn't, he bought a sissy bar, and I've loved riding with him ever since.

And it turns out, I like being his old lady. I like riding bitch and just hanging out enjoying the ride. I've ridden hundreds of miles on road trips, through rain and shine, and have really loved every minute.

Okay. I haven't loved the minutes where I felt he was going to fast on a corner, but we've only scrapped a peg once, so he does know what he's doing. I trust him.

He once asked if he went blind, would I learn how to ride so I could take us both out on the bike....um, no, honey, I'm sorry. I really am! But no. I treasure my spot on the bike behind him. There is no way I'm going to let him be my old lady!

PB&J

The best sandwich in the world only needs three things: white bread, Jiff peanut butter, and Smuckers seedless strawberry jam.

To make it absolutely perfect, once the sandwich is made, but it in a sandwich baggy, deposit that into the bottom of a brown lunch bag, and put a heavy apple on top of it, to make it all squished and soggy by the time lunch rolls around.

I'm not kidding. When I pack my own lunch, I do that on purpose.

My kids think it's nasty, and I've had to apologize more than once for forgetting that not everyone thinks a smashed sandwich is the bomb!

It reminds me of being a kid, of opening my lunch box and thinking "yum"...except for that one year when we had homemade plum jam with the skins still swimming in the jelly. That was not okay.

I rarely allow myself the treat of a good pb&j sandwich, but the other day I did. As I pulled it out of my bag (the last thing in the bag mind you), I flashed back to grade school and had to smile at the one thing my perfect sandwich was missing.....it did not have a bite out of it.

That's right. A bite. I don't ever remember a sandwich my Mom made for us that didn't have a bit taken first. I had thought this was perfectly normal, and every kid had a bite in their sandwich. Nope. Turns out, we were special.

I like to think of it as our Mom's way of saying "Hi" when we were at school.

Either that or she loves PB&J on white bread as much as me and just could not resist that delicious bite of perfection!

I personally don't take bites of the kids sandwiches....I am perfectly happy just licking the pb off the knife. And since licks don't really count, I don't have to record it in my food journal!