A Year of Firsts

The house. The first year of having a house with the person you love most in the world is a year of firsts, a year of enjoying your life together. So for this blog I should talk about how Lib and I put up our Christmas lights for the first time, and the neighbor was happy and shouted, "It's been twenty years since there were Christmas lights on the house!" It made us feel warm inside. I should write about how we had our first Thanksgiving with Lib's family at our house, about how her sister and she slaved all day in the kitchen making a ridiculous spread of dishes and deserts from scratch, and how delicious it was. And I should probably write about cutting down our first Christmas tree for the house on Friday, trimming it and whatnot, but I'm
not going to.

For the first time this weekend in our house, I was awakened by Lib who heard something moving around the house at two in the morning. She wanted to know if I had crated the dog, but I definitely had. She heard something moving around downstairs, but conveniently forgot to stress that it sounded like an animal running around; she said it sounded like someone was downstairs. I heard nothing. But of course, I couldn't just go back to sleep. I was awake, with my ears peeled. I regretted not keeping a baseball bat in the second-floor bedroom; it was in the farthest corner of the basement with our other zombie killer props from Halloween, including a machete and a field hockey stick, either of which would have been nice to have while I went to see what was going on.

My only option was the chair from Lib's desk, but that was way too unwieldy--I had to go bare-handed and hope the intruder was about five-five, a hundred and fifty pounds or smaller. On my way to the steps, I could see something on the floor in the dark, so I picked it up only to discover the small water bottle we use to "discourage" the cat, but I kept it any way because I guess it was better than nothing and kind of felt like a gun in my hand; besides, an unexpected, well-placed spritz could give me the edge I needed after the intruder heard me creak down every single step past a dark, crumpled-up shirt.

The living room was clear. My courage returned once I had a lamp on and I decided to slink my way along the wall into the kitchen where I could trade up for a knife. Once equipped, I checked the lower two bedrooms and the bathroom so I could be sure that it was clear for later use. Then it was down to the basement, which also cleared inspection--creeping along the basement is a hell of a lot easier without the creaking floorboards of the rest of the house. I made my way back to the workshop, and once again traded up for Lib's zombie ball bat with the bloody "Are we having fun yet" sticker on it, and was emboldened enough to give the house one more cursory inspection as I regrettably turned out all of the lights again and headed up to bed where I noticed the crumpled shirt was actually the cat, who had probably in a fit of anger, knocked over the spritzer bottle and resumed her midnight crazies, waking Lib, and convincing me to find a permanent spot for a baseball bat beneath the bed.