Things That Go Bump in the Night

Recently, the weather here has been down right pleasant in the north east and the evenings have been somewhat cool. I don't remember the last time I had the air conditioning on, and the windows are open at night to let the cool breeze through. I actually broke down and put the comforter back on the bed because my sleep was being interrupted by the chilly air.

So last night was a cool evening, windows open, sleep taking over my body and mind. Nothing but the crickets chirping, the soothing sound of a car passing by on their way home from an evening out. The sound of the fan in the window upstairs humming its lullaby. CRASH!!! Thump, thump, thump!

"What the hell was that?" (Or a varying form of that question.) So, I get out of bed while trying to catch my breath from whatever the heck that was. I automatically assume that it was one of the animals getting into something. This often happens when a neighborhood cat comes to visit and is within sight of my two. But, not this time. All of the animals including the dog were looking at me wondering why I'm out of bed at 2:00 a.m.

So, I get to the stairs and look up to find that in fact it was the fan in the window that had fallen out. My nephew was sleeping upstairs, but apparently the crash and burn of the fan did not rouse him from his sleep.

The window fan I had previous to this one was notorious for falling out at inappropriate times of the day or night. It finally had to go in the garbage because it's last fall actually knocked something quite important lose from the mechanism and it wobbled and clanked instead of whirring and cooling.

The unwelcomed telephone call in the middle of the night, which, thankfully I haven't had in quite some time is another one that really gets the old ticker moving out of a dead sleep. My mom's side of the family was notorious for this. Mainly because someone had died. But, wouldn't they still be dead in the morning? Would it make any difference if we found out about it 8:00 a.m. rather than 3:30 a.m.?

I've also had one other traumatizing event in the middle of the night. It's the over the door shoe rack collapse of 2004. Again, I automatically assumed it was one of the cats dive bombing into the closet, because the closet has some pretty interesting stuff in it, particularly if you are a cat!

But, again I was wrong, it was in fact, the unrelenting weight of the 30 or more pair of shoes that strain the little plastic clips that hold the rack to the door. My new one just broke the other day. But, fortunately, I have a MacGyver in my life and he was able to make some adjustments so it won't come crashing down in the middle of the night.