i slept horribly last night. after semi-fitful sleep, i woke at 4:30 a.m. to find the cat walking all over me. i put her out and then slowly settled myself back in. i hadn't been asleep more than a half hour before something fell (loudly) in the house and woke me again. i turned on the lights and investigated a couple of rooms, but couldn't find the felled object. i got back in bed, but the longer i laid there, the more my runaway imagination convinced me that someone was lurking in one of the unchecked rooms and that the noise i had heard earlier was the intruder dropping a shell, or some other weaponry destined for cruel purposes. i was just waiting for my bedroom door to creak open…

i'm sure that my bedtime reading of Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed wasn’t helping the situation.

in a complete state of sleep-deprived delirium, i grabbed the cell phone and put it in bed with me "just in case." i quickly determined that the blue glow of the phone would be a dead giveaway of my call for help, should i find myself trying to discreetly dial in the presence of the offender, so i stuffed the phone deep undercover, literally. i debated whether or not i would be able to successfully dial 9-1-1 under the covers without seeing the keypad, so i did a dry run. when i pulled the phone out to see if i had dialed correctly, i realized that i did NOT dial 9-1-1, but INSTEAD had managed to place a call to my friend, alycia (there are disadvantages to being #1 on the autodial list). i quickly hung up and hoped with all my might that her cell phone was not tucked under her covers, too.

by virtue of the fact that i lived to tell the tale, you can safely presume that there was no intruder. upon further investigation in the daylight, i discovered that the object of my distress was a plastic towel hanger on the back of the bathroom door whose stickiness had decided to finally give way in the wee hours. the lessons i've learned? number 1): choose sweeter bedtime tales and, number 2): just drape your towels over the side of the tub.