Beware of floating heads!

When you have children you are prepared to have your sleep interrupted at any moment. It's just the nature of the game. Even when they are well into the "sleeping through the night" portion of their lives, there are still nightmares, midnight bathroom breaks, etc.

Let me rewind. The evening already ended with me on edge. I was in the basement by myself. (As I am most nights). The TV was on but nothing happened to be on at the moment because I was reading something on my iPad. Dead silence. Then, the slightest scratching sound came from the drop ceiling in my basement. Enough to have me stop what I was doing and listen closer. 

Let me interrupt and say I hate mice. We have had times in the past 10+ years I've been living in this house that those furry hell beasts have made their way into my home and it always disrupts my life. I have murdered more than one. But I know they are always there, hiding in the shadow, ready to invade my life at any time.

So I'm in the basement listening. The scratching noise was very brief. I was listening for any sort of scurrying, but that never came. Just light scratching the lasted 4-5 seconds, 3 different times in the span of 15 minutes. Then, nothing.

For those that suggest I lift a title in the drop ceiling to investigate, you can go F yourself. I will not risk it dive bombing me from above and eating my face! Plus I've then invited him directly into my home! No thank you.

So I went to bed last night a little in edge. Hoping beyond hope that it was not what my brain thought it Might be. As I laid down to sleep I found I had trouble with my meet up with the sandman. I kept thinking  something small and evil was going to run across my forehead at any minute. Then another thought crossed my mind. See, we have two cats and as much as I don't trust their hunting skills all that much, I could see in my mind's eye, one of them creeping downstairs, spotting an intruder, pouncing, killing and then being awoken with a mouse corpse dropped on my face, or worse yet a half-dead mouse.

So it was with these thoughts that I gradually drifted to sleep.  I wasn't more than a half hour down when I heard my youngest daughter scream. I've heard her cry in the middle of the night before, but this sound was different. There was terror in her voice. And the sound wasn't coming from the bedroom (which I could out off to a bad dream) but right outside my door!  I leapt from the bed in a panic and half dazed. My wife would say I was nonsensically shouting "what what what what!" until I reached her in the hallway. I scoop her in my arms and start patrolling the area for something, anything. And then she tells me what caused the panic. Seems she was up for one of those bathroom breaks. When she finished, she exited the bathroom still in a daze when she caught sight if something.

Mrs Jergy celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday, and as such had a Myra balloon downstairs that had somehow made its way upstairs throughout the night. When my daughter came across it, she viewed it as a disembodied floating head head to strike as so left the bathroom. 

If my heart wasn't racing so fast, I might have laughed in her face.

So I take her to her room and calm her down. She's back asleep in seconds. While I am in her bedroom, Mrs Jergy gets up to use the bathroom. I just assume all the commotion work her up and she needed to go. Until I notice her looking in the mirror with a piece of toilet tissue in her hand that has small red blotches on it. Seems in my panic, one of the cats (who sleeps near my wife's head) also panicked. It jumps up, runs across her face and scratches her eyelid, drawing blood.

Let me just end this story by saying kids and animals suck.