Not a Story about my Children

If I am feeding Eli while Lila is in the bath, I sometimes turn the TV on because there's only so much time that can be spent in contemplation of a nursing baby, no matter how cute he is. I did this last night and ended up getting totally sucked in to a ghost movie on the SciFi channel. (An American Haunting, in case you're interested.) Doug ended up sucked in as well and we watched the whole thing. It wasn't the best movie ever, but it was good enough that I was completely creeped out after it was over.

There are a few things we do while getting ready for bed at night. For me, one of those things is cleaning out the kitties' litter box, and this I did, with only slightly irrational fears that something was going to jump out of it and scare me. When I was carrying the bag of goods out to the trash can, I remembered that all the windows on the playhouse were open and there was a chance of rain. There was no way I was going into the dark backyard and inside a small dark house after that movie, so I decided to ask Doug to do it for me.

I went back inside, finished the rest of my little pre-bed chores, then found Doug and asked him to be chivalrous and do me this favor. He agreed, and, with only minor grumbling, found his shoes and headed for the back door.

At this point, I should probably tell you that one of the other things I do before bed is set the alarm. Since I was operating on auto-pilot, I went ahead and set the alarm as usual, without thinking about Doug needing to go back outside. I should also tell you that, for some unholy reason, opening the back door when the alarm is armed makes it go off instantly...

So I'm brushing my teeth when I hear this remarkably loud noise that sounds something like a banshee, or at least what I imagine a banshee would sound like, if they existed. I then hear the sounds of Doug running for the alarm keypad (halfway across the house, in the laundry room) and slipping and sliding on the wood floors along the way. Charlie, apparently, was in the path of this running and slipping, and was already understandably disturbed by the noise, so he freaks out and starts running and slipping too.

Unfortunately for him, he chose the same destination as Doug and thought that he was being chased, which freaked him out even more. All of this seemed to last much longer than the few seconds it actually did and then Doug reached the keypad and the alarm finally stopped. It had only taken me half a second to realize what was happening and I was fighing very hard to control my laughter when Doug came into the bathroom, looking like he had seen a ghost, and informed me that I could go out and close my own stupid windows.

He was all bark though and went on to close them after all. That gave me a chance to laugh and him a chance to recover his sense of humor about the situation. It still cracks me up. That one's going onto my List of Reasons I Wish we had Video Cameras Installed in Every Room.

The children, incidentally, slept through all of this, despite the fact that the alarm is right outside their room. Amazing.