Things That Go Bump In The Night

On Sunday night, we had friends over for dinner.  While we sat in the living room afterwards, eating cake and talking about Christmas, I heard a...rustling...in the other room.

Wide-eyed and suspiciously, I whispered to The Lawyer, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?," he responded, nonchalantly. "The noise in the alley?"

"Umm, I thought it was coming from the...kitchen," I whispered again, noticing that our guests were now listening to us.

You see, I have this thing.  This heightened awareness, you might say.  After living in many older buildings in Baltimore, at the very hint of a scratching or noise--especially in the kitchen, especially during winter--I'm all, "IT IS A MOUSE AND WE NEED TO KILL IT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THEY CARRY DISEASE AND PEOPLE DIED FROM THE PLAGUE AND I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!"

(And, 12 Peta advocates probably just unfollowed me.)

The boyfriend once owned a nice house in the city with his ex-wife and it had a lot of "character," he says.  Although I never saw said house, "character" is code for "ye house was old."

He shares my heightened awareness.

So, this morning, after he left for work, and I was still sleeping, I was less than pleased to be jarred awake by a huge crash in the condo.  I raced out of bed to find the Christmas tree completely toppled over, with smashed ornaments strewn across the floor.

Half-awake, I called The Lawyer who apologized and said that he moved the couch this morning and might have pushed on the electrical cord for the lights inadvertently.  It was no problem, I told him.  I ripped off the paper from the presents that got doused with the water in the tree stand, and spent the afternoon reassembling the tree and vacuuming up the smashed ornaments.  Before he hung up this morning, though, The Lawyer said,

"It's a good thing we don't have a cat, right, or we'd think that something else had happened!"

Yeah, right. A cat.

Fast forward to late afternooon, as I'm sitting in the living room and start hearing things falling over in the kitchen.  Not heavy things.  An empty plastic cup on the counter, actually.  But, from my view into the kitchen, I could see the ornaments strung from the kitchen light fixture swaying back and forth as well.

OH. SNAP.

After my three seconds of paralysis, I finally got up to investigate and found...

....that I left the window open.

And that next to the tree, there was also a large window open.  And it is very breezy here in DC today.  And also, the condo is on the 7th floor, and as I speak, those ornaments are still swaying back and forth in the wind.

So, there has been a very rational explanation for this all.  For now.  But for real, you guys, this is why I live in the suburbs.  I don't think my heart can keep up with my mind's imaginings about this particular issue.