Crying Wolf

This is a reposting from May of 2008 when Phil and I were first living together on our own. I've always thought these stories were funny. Hope you do, too.

I'm a light sleeper, so most bumps in the night wake me easily.

Sometimes something spooks my pups causing them to bark wildly, waking me in a panicked state. Phil sleeps through most everything, and that results in my night time anxiety to worsen. I'm fearful something will happen, and he'll snore his way right through a home invasion. I know I sound nuts, but that's how I am. I've been like this since I was a little kid - not sure why - so I try not to fight it too much.

Now that you understand a little about my sleeping patterns, you'll understand why the spontaneous barking fit spawned by my two protective mutts caused me to wake up with a racing heart and shaky hands. I spent a few minutes lying in bed, listening to the barking, hoping they'd realize nothing was wrong and go back to sleep. No such luck. I finally got out of bed, while Phil snored, to check things out.

I looked through the front window, peeking through without moving the blinds much in case someone outside would see me. Nothing. I went to the slider and looked through the blinds. Again, nothing. But the pups kept barking - so I wondered if they could hear something that I couldn't. Naturally, I had to retrace my steps and look through all of the windows again.

This time, I saw something.

From the large front window, you can see about half of our driveway. I was able to see my car, and about half of Phil's truck. One thing I could see was that his passenger side door was open. I instantly freaked out and ran into the back bedroom to wake the beast. He questioned my certainty that we were being robbed as he stumbled out of bed and grabbed his flashlight and switchblade and headed furiously out of the front door ready to confront the hooligans who were taking our things.

Like the scared pussycat that I am, I watched out of the front window to make sure he was okay.

I finally had the dogs calmed down when he came back into the house. "There's no one out there, and my door isn't open... must be a reflection off of the paint," he said in an aggravated tone. "Oh, hehe, better safe that sorry, right?" I responded sheepishly. I felt silly for making such an assumption, but there was no way I'd go back to bed thinking our vehicles were being raided.

We teased about the incident the next day, but I could tell he was uninterested in my night-time nervous episodes.

I woke this morning around 4:00am and rolled over to cuddle back up with my handsome man. As I was dozing back to sleep, I hear what I believe are five gunshots in the near distance. It wasn't close enough to call the cops, but it was close enough to make me nervous. Of course, I nudged Phil awake and said, "I think I just heard five gunshots." Without missing a beat or even opening his eyes, he responded, "You got bullet holes in you?"
"No," I assured.
"Then you're good."

Not quite the support I was looking for during the 4:00am shooting, but I understood that unless there was an emergency, Mr. Big wasn't going to let me disturb his beauty sleep.