Bad Moon Rising

June 24, 2015October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 35 Comments

I was sitting at the breakfast table mulling over topics for today’s post when it happened. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly shocked. I’d been half-expecting something bad.

Usually by the time I get out of the shower in the morning I’ve got some ideas for a blog post, but this week nothing funny had happened. I hadn’t fallen off an exercise ball or dropped a dumbbell on my face at the gym. I hadn’t misread anything that made me go, “Wait, what?” and I hadn’t blurted out anything incriminating or even slightly inappropriate.

That made me nervous. I figured the universe must be saving up something truly dire for me.

I was right.

I’d made it all the way to the breakfast table without inspiration, and I was staring blankly out the window when the woman from several doors down emerged from her house with her little dog. Nothing unusual about that, but apparently there was something on her driveway this morning. So she bent over to pick it up.

Bent deeply at the waist.

She was wearing a short nightdress.

Fortunately she was too far away for me to make out details, but if she was actually wearing underwear, it was the exact colour of her skin.

I looked away hurriedly, thinking she’d feel the draft and realize what was happening, but either she was happily oblivious or else she’s an exhibitionist. She puttered around for a good five minutes, turning in all directions and bending over so deeply her skirt rode up far enough for everyone to see not only London and France, but also Turkey, Pakistan, and all of Oceania.

I admit it; I laughed. It reminded me of all the other times I’ve been subjected to views I really could have done without.

A few decades ago mooning was a common sport on the highway. Back then, you knew enough not to glance over if a car pulled up beside you but didn’t pass. If you did look, you were almost certain to see a bare ass hanging out the car window. (I haven’t seen that in years, though, so I guess the seatbelt laws have been good for something.)

And of course, plumber’s butt still abounds. I’ve seen ‘way too many hairy butt-cracks burgeoning out of low-slung jeans while their owners wrestle building materials into their trucks at the lumber store. But I usually assume those are accidental.

The ones I really wonder about are the guys who wear loose-fitting shorts with no underwear. Then they sit directly across from you with a smile on their face and their junk hanging out the leg of their shorts. Okay, guys, maybe it’s nice to give the boys some air, but I can’t help thinking you’re enjoying it a little too much.

I suppose I can’t exactly criticize, though. Having inadvertently done my share of mooning I pretty much have to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, including my alfresco neighbour lady.

At least there was one good thing about getting mooned: I renewed my acquaintance with one of my old-time faves, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

P.S. I saw my neighbour again about twenty minutes later, but this time she was wearing shorts. Maybe she noticed the breeze after all…

Putting The ‘Real’ In Real Estate

June 17, 2015 / Diane Henders / 38 Comments

One of my hobbies is shopping for land. It’s a bit of a pipe dream since it’s so expensive around Calgary, but I keep looking just in case there’s a bargain out there. Hey, if it made sense, it wouldn’t be a hobby, right?

Over the years I’ve gradually learned the language of real estate listings, so I’ve decided to share some of my hard-earned knowledge. Here are translations for some common phrases:

“Pristine recreational quarter”: It’s swamp.

“Beautiful creekside property”: It’s swamp.

“Perfect for hunters and sportsmen”: It’s swamp, with scrubby black spruce and gnarly undergrowth.

“Enjoy the beauty of nature and watch the wildlife from your window”: It’s mostly swamp. And if you try to grow a garden on the part that’s not swamp, a herd of ravenous deer will devour it.

“All the space you need”: It’s bald-ass prairie.

“Stunning views”: It’s bald-ass prairie.

“Perfect for your horses”: It’s bald-ass prairie.

“Seasonal creek”: It’s bald-ass prairie, but there’s a low spot where the runoff collects in the spring.

“Over 500 trees planted around the building site”: It’s bald-ass prairie, and the ‘trees’ are six-inch twigs. They might be taller than you by the time you die, but only if you have really severe osteoporosis and you shrink to under five feet.

“Spectacular mountain view”: You can see the very tips of the mountains if you stand on a ladder in the far northwest corner of the property next to the neighbour’s barn.

“Oil lease revenue”: There’s a sour-gas well smack in the middle of the only habitable part of the land. The rest is swamp.

“Ideal location to build the walkout of your dreams”: It’s a 45-degree grade with a ten-foot strip of level land at the top.

“Owner is motivated to sell”: There’s a feedlot and slaughterhouse on the next quarter and the stench of concentrated cow shit and rotting innards will slag your sinuses from two miles away.

“Wonderfully secluded property”: There’s no road access. To get to the property you have to build half a mile of road, or else dodge an evil-tempered bull while you four-wheel through the neighbour’s pasture.

“A half-mile of beautiful river frontage”: It’s a flood plain.

“It’s been handed down from generation to generation but now the owners must regretfully pass it on to someone who’ll enjoy it as much as they did”: A giant sawmill has been built on the property to the south and a bunch of nutjobs have established a ‘sporting society’ on the property to the north. The owners are fleeing like rats deserting a sinking ship.

“There’s a sign on the property”: No, there isn’t.

“No, really, there’s a sign on the property”: Okay, there is; but it’s invisible unless you approach from the correct direction and glance over at exactly the right moment. You will only discover this after driving a systematic grid pattern for at least an hour.

“Fenced and cross-fenced”: …sometime in the 1930s. Now it’s a gap-toothed line of drunken-looking fenceposts with a couple of strands of rusty barbed wire concealed in the grass, just waiting to wrap around your ankle and trip you face-first into the nearest cow patty.

…But I have to admit that after hundreds of disappointments, I’ve developed my own double-speak. It’s only one phrase, but I use it over and over:

“It’s not quite what we’re looking for.”

I’m sure you can guess the translation. (Hint: If your guess includes an f-bomb or two, you’re probably pretty close.)

* * *

P.S. Book 10 is sailing along! It’ll definitely be released early, probably in late summer. Woohoo!

Beware The Sock Imps

June 3, 2015 / Diane Henders / 42 Comments

I’ve just realized socks are the handiwork of evil. Not big bad eat-your-soul-for-breakfast evil; but something smaller and more mischievous, like imps. Think about it: No other garment causes as much annoyance.

Okay, I know you’re shaking your head and mumbling, “Nuh-uh. There are worse things than socks.”

That’s very true. For example, most women and a large percentage of men believe female undergarments are the contrivances of Satan himself. Women know this because we have to wear them, and any man who’s tried to manipulate the devilish little hooks and clasps one-handed while simultaneously maintaining a suave distraction will surely agree.

But never mind that; we all know women’s underwear is Big Evil. I’m talking about little evil.

Sock evil.

It’s gotta be imps. Why else could you put an even number of socks into the wash but find an odd number after the cycle is complete? Either the imps steal socks out of washer/dryers or else they’re employed in the manufacturing process, knitting every second sock out of some water-soluble substance that looks identical to cotton. Then they weave in a time-delay spell so that only one sock will dissolve per load… each and every time.

That would also explain why, when I’ve bought twenty identical pairs of socks so I can match them up effortlessly, after several washings they don’t match anymore. Some are still white with their elastic crisp and intact while others are as gray and baggy as socks twice their age.

Or maybe imps sneak into my laundry basket and randomly snatch a sock to polish their impmobiles*. Then when the sock is thoroughly grubby they stretch its elastic out of shape and return it to the basket with spiteful little giggles.

And what about the fact that within ten minutes of buying new socks, at least half develop holes in the toes? While I am willing to consider the possibility that I either have freakish sabre-toes or a talent for selecting defective socks (or both), I’d swear that sometimes the holes appear before I’ve even worn the socks. So I can’t rule out the possibility of sock-nibbling imps in my drawers. (Yikes, that sounds both alarming and painful. I meant my dresser drawers.)

Or maybe the socks develop holes because the special dissolving fibres got clumped together in one place instead of being evenly distributed. A defective manufacturing defect, if you will. Imps probably aren’t great at quality control.

I’m pretty sure a misery-inducing spell is woven in during the manufacturing process, too. If you’ve ever worn socks inside winter boots, you know what I mean. Your socks can have elastic tops that rival tourniquets for tightness, but within ten steps the socks begin to creep down. And down. A block later, they’re bunched into a painful wad around your instep.

So you stop and take off the boot, which pulls off the sock, too, so you’re left balancing precariously with your bare-naked foot waving around in the 30-below air. Now you must retrieve the sock from inside the boot, pull on the sock, and reinsert your newly-clad foot in the boot; all without falling into a snowbank.

And regardless of whether you fail or succeed, you know you’ll have to do it again in another block.

Malicious sock imps. They’re the only logical answer.

*Yes, imps own vehicles. How else can you explain the AMC Gremlin?

I’m Such A Snotty Princess

May 20, 2015May 20, 2015 / Diane Henders / 42 Comments

Hubby brought home a cold last week. As I mentioned several years ago, we generally don’t share viruses because I’m probably a Neanderthal, but this one seems to have targeted the weaker homo sapiens part of my genetic makeup.

Right now I’m at the stage where my throat and lungs are on fire but I’m not coughing yet. I’m still clinging to the idiot hope that maybe the Rhinovirus Fairy will pass me by instead of scooping out my brain and replacing it with snot.

But I think she (or ‘he’, to be fair) has already begun the process, because in the last few days I’ve developed a disturbing tendency to shuffle to a halt and stand staring into space for several seconds before saying, “Come on, brain, you can do this!” aloud. It seems to work – I usually remember what I was trying to do, but it tends to draw wary looks if I do it outside the privacy of my home.

Meanwhile, I’m sucking on zinc/echinacea/Vitamin C lozenges and drinking hot lime juice with honey. (I prefer lime instead of the traditional lemon because then I can pretend I’m drinking a hot margarita instead of a medicinal beverage.) I don’t expect this to cure or in any way improve my cold, but at least it gives me something to do while I wait.

When I sat down to write this post I racked my virus-laden brain for something funny to say about the common cold, but you know what? I got nothin’. Colds suck. Or rather, blow. Great soggy snot-balls.

So instead, here are a few things that made me laugh this week:

My blogging buddy Carl D’Agostino’s cartoon: https://carldagostino.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/compulsive-behavior-by-carl-dagostino/

My nephew’s comment about men’s locker rooms: “Yep, no matter which way you turn, you’re gonna see something you really didn’t want to see.” That reminded us both of this comic from The Oatmeal and made us laugh uproariously. (Scroll down to the bottom of The Oatmeal’s page for the one about the locker room.)

Then there’s this picture sent to me by one of my readers, Sue W., because she saw it on Facebook and knew it would make me laugh. (The misspelling of ‘potato’ is neither hers nor mine.)

That’ll make you think twice about digging in the garden…

I’m hoping the person who wrote the caption meant ‘love this’ in the philosophical sense, not the physical. But probably only my mind would ever latch onto that critical distinction.

This Twitter message was laughable because it was such a lame attempt at marketing from somebody who clearly knows me… wait for it… NOT AT ALL:

Totally me. Not.

Let me count the ways this made me laugh:

They clearly put so much time and effort into crafting their marketing message. Ten seconds with Google Translate might have helped.
It’s pink. Anybody who knows me (even slightly) knows that I’ve never in my life worn or even owned anything pink.
It has a princess crown on it. Is there anything about me that could in any way be construed as princess-like?
It has a cutesy heart on it. I’m totally gonna wear this with my biking leathers and flaming-skull helmet.
And hell yeah, I’m going to click on a random link sent by some spammer just because the T-shirt has my first name on it. Nice try, guys. But thanks for the laughs.

What made you chuckle this week? And/or what’s your favourite cold remedy?

A Super Pickle Tickle

May 13, 2015 / Diane Henders / 25 Comments

Last week I asked if anybody else was harbouring unusual mementos in their home. My blogging buddy Carrie Rubin stepped up to the plate (pun intended) with her Super Pickle, and kindly offered to let me use him in a blog post:

Super Pickle in all his glory.

That reminded me of yet another oddball item in my house: a leering wooden zucchini.

Quite a bit more disturbing than Super Pickle.

Needless to say, the comic possibilities were endless for a woman of my twisted imagination. So many phallic vegetables, so few words allotted to a single blog post…

I considered writing a flash-fiction zucchini-on-pickle romance. After all, Super Pickle wears his rainbow tights with such pride and panache. But he’s so innocently goofy and endearing, I couldn’t bring myself to roll out any hide-the-pickle jokes.

If I was only writing about my freaky double-jointed zucchini I’d go for it without hesitation, because let’s face it: that deranged smile that could mean anything from an invitation for acts better left undescribed to an offer of cake made with his own pulverised progeny. (Mmm, and now I’m hungry for zucchini cake.)

In any case, I’d never tweak a pickle without knowing its background, so more research was required. I vaguely remember Super Pickle from decades ago, but I guess I was living under a rock in the 70s and 80s because I had to go and look him up on the internet to see what he was all about.

I did that with much trepidation, cringing at the thought of finding photos that might defile my virginal eyeballs when I searched for “super pickle”. Much to my disappointment surprise, everything came up absolutely clean. Either somebody has sneakily installed a content filter on my computer, or Super Pickle is beyond reproach.

And he’s still popular. I even came across a fan forum where people described their attachments to Super Pickle and their ongoing search for Super Pickle toys: http://www.inthe80s.com/toys/superpickle.shtml. Carrie, there’s a retail opportunity for you!

Anyway, in the end I discovered that Super Pickle had his beginnings as the star of a 1972 children’s pop-up book so, considering his G-rated origins, any off-colour references on my part would be totally inappropriate. Which, by an amazing coincidence, is the title of my last blog compilation; but still. Out of respect for Super Pickle, I’m going to defy the almost-irresistible compulsion to make a crack about pop-up pickles.

Instead, I’ll leave you with a pickle-related joke:

Chatting over the fence with her neighbour one day, a woman remarks on the tomatoes in his garden. “They’re so ripe already,” she marvels. “How do you always get the first red tomatoes on the block?”

He leans closer to whisper, “I have a secret. Every night after everybody else is in bed I sneak out to the garden wearing a trench coat and nothing else. I flash the tomatoes and they blush red! You should try it with your garden.”

Inspired, the woman follows his advice. A week later they’re chatting over the fence again and her neighbour inquires, “So how are your tomatoes?”

“Well, they’re still nothing special. But you should see the size of the cucumbers!”

See you in the produce department! (I’ll be the one eyeing the cucumbers and snickering.)

Beetle Chips And Other Stories

April 22, 2015 / Diane Henders / 40 Comments

I was probably too young to remember when my mother admonished me not to eat bugs, but I’m sure she must have. I really would have preferred to follow her advice.

I realize there are some parts of the world where bugs are, if not delicacies, at least a dietary staple. Even here in Canada I’ve seen cricket lollipops and chocolate-covered grasshoppers, but I’ve never tried them. Hell, I grew up on the prairies. Once you’ve smelled the stomach-churning scent of grasshopper guts slowly barbequing on a hot engine and seen a 12” worm squeeze out of a cricket’s butt, you’re pretty much over the idea of eating grasshoppers and crickets.

Which makes the accidental ingestion of bugs that much more revolting to me. I’ve never experienced the clichéd ‘bite into an apple and find half a worm’, thank goodness. But I’ve come perilously close to devouring a couple of giant shiny black beetles.

Okay, they weren’t exactly ‘giant’ – they were probably only about an inch long. But still. That’s pretty-damn-big when we’re talking about bugs in food.

Once I was absently munching chips while reading. I don’t know what made me look into the bag at precisely the right instant, but there it was: a big black beetle lying belly-up and tastily coated in sour-cream-and-onion powder. My next mouthful would’ve had a very odd taste indeed.

Then I remembered I’d taken that bag of chips on a camping trip the week before, and apparently I’d picked up a hitchhiker. At least he died happy, surrounded by more food than he could ever eat. But I carefully avoided thinking about what he might have left behind on the chips.

Another time I was startled by exactly the same type of black beetle scuttling out of a peach pit as I cut the peach open. Fortunately I hadn’t bitten into the peach, or I’d have gotten a squirmy mouthful.

And I’m an authority on squirmy mouthfuls, after the time I drank from a garden hose and ended up with a large spider crawling across my tongue. That cured me of drinking from the garden hose without letting it run for a while first.

I’m sure I’ve eaten my fair share of carrot maggots – they’re exactly the same colour as carrots, and I’d eaten quite a few carrots before I realized what was causing those itty-bitty tunnels. And I’ve definitely had my fill of gnats or whatever those bugs are that hover in giant clouds over the road. If you’re on a bike or even walking fast, there’s just no way to avoid them short of suicidal evasive action.

All this was brought to my mind a few weeks ago when I bolted awake in the middle of the night. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t take much to make me do that, but this time it wasn’t a false alarm. Something was definitely wrong.

Then I realized there was a funny taste in my mouth. And there had been a lot of fruit flies around…

Anybody else got bug stories? Have you ever intentionally eaten bugs?

Random Thoughts From A Fried Brain

April 15, 2015 / Diane Henders / 20 Comments

I’ve been completely immersed in changing over all my domains to a new hosting provider this week. It was an immensely complicated and time-consuming affair, fraught with stress over recreating four websites and about 50 email accounts without losing any connections or having any website downtime. Somewhat to my own surprise I emerged victorious yesterday, and I still even have most of my hair. Enough to hide the places where I yanked chunks out, anyway.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough remaining brainpower to create any kind of intelligible blog post. So instead of failing in the attempt, I’m going to offer a few random thoughts from this week and tack a cartoon on the end.

Here goes:

The only thing that differentiates me from a garden-variety nutjob is the fact that instead of following orders from the voices in my head, I write them down and call them fiction.
You know how in the movies the tough guys always say, “Awright, you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?” Does anybody ever say, “Ooh, ooh, let’s do it the hard way!”
Ever notice how, with computers, the “easy way” is indistinguishable from the “hard way”? And if you cynically attempt a harder way because you already know the easy way is a disaster… well, that way lies madness.
Computers contain advanced sensors capable of determining the exact amount of stress hormones in your system. When a preset level is attained, the computer will automatically crash. If your stress levels continue to escalate, it will develop a catastrophic problem that requires a minimum of a full day’s pissing around to fix.
The above also applies to smartphones.
Regardless of the amount of work to be done, the work always expands to fill the time available… plus an hour.
The fastest way to get attentive customer service is to tell them to cancel your account.
Two lies don’t make a truth, but three or more lies make a sales brochure.

And I’ll leave you with this:

Automotive Heaven Can Wait

April 8, 2015 / Diane Henders / 39 Comments

Last week I was in automotive heaven… and it turned out to be more of a pain in the butt than I’d anticipated.

Rick and Sandy (of Hand Crafted Images) and I were doing the photographs for Book 2’s updated cover. Car buffs may recall that Aydan drooled over an Audi R8 in THE SPY IS CAST, and wonder of wonders, I got up-close-and-personal with a real R8 this week thanks to the generosity of Doug S. and the staff at Glenmore Audi.

As with most undertakings that involve me, there was inappropriate laughter.

The dealership is a pristine building featuring bright white ceilings and sleek grey floors. Other cars were scattered throughout the showroom, but two Quattros crouched protectively beside the R8, their feral headlight configurations watching us like predatory beasts.

Yes, I was slightly intimidated.

At first we trod reverently around the R8, not approaching it too closely so our heated and unsteady breathing wouldn’t fog its gleaming paint.

We were completely freaked out at the thought of being close enough to damage an automobile that costs more than twice what I paid for my first house. We checked and re-checked the tripods that held the backdrop, cringing at visions of the metal poles toppling onto the car.

At last we had the backdrops in place and the moment of truth arrived: It was time to unlock the car.

Then I would strip down to my ignominious outfit of stiletto heels and gym shorts (because I didn’t want to wear a skirt and accidentally emulate the Basic Instinct leg-crossing scene) and… yes… I would actually sit in the driver’s seat.

That’s where the giggles started. In the first place, a woman wearing makeup, gym shorts, and stiletto heels just looks ridiculous.

Also, this woman wearing stiletto heels looks slightly ridiculous anyway. The R8 tops out at four feet. In heels, I’m 6’-2”. I towered over the car (and everybody else in the dealership).

The next issue was that the stilettos give me a 38” inseam. Try stuffing those long legs into a car while holding your breath in case a lethal heel scratches something that costs more than your entire car. But I managed.

In short order, the next issue surfaced. The R8’s seats are set in quite far from the exterior body panels. If I sat in the driver’s seat, my legs barely made it out of the car. To get the shot we wanted, I’d have to perch on the rocker panel.

For the record, the R8’s rocker panels are not designed to comfortably accommodate a human ass. (Nor a human posterior, for that matter.)

It got worse. On the original cover, the model’s lips are parted. It looks as though she’s pronouncing the letter ‘D’, and it’s supposed to look pouty or sensuous or something.

My pout looked more like ‘Duh’. I stared vacantly into space, slack-lipped and clutching a cardboard cutout of a Glock. I only managed a few minutes of that before dissolving into helpless laughter. Thank you, Sandy and Rick, for your infinite patience!

But at last we packed up the equipment and vacated the premises with relief, leaving the fabulous car unscathed. (Which was more than I could say for my aching ass.)

It was only afterward I realized that my butt was the only part of me that ever touched the car. I never even put my hands on the steering wheel.

I guess I’m just not cut out for automotive heaven.

* * *

P.S. Unedited proofs are always good for a chuckle. Note my alter-ego in the reflection beside me:

My inner werewolf sneaks out when I least expect it…

Dental Daftness

April 1, 2015April 1, 2015 / Diane Henders / 24 Comments

So I went to the dentist this week…

Wait, don’t run away! If you get the willies just thinking about dental procedures, I promise I’m not going to describe any scary stuff. But I did manage to look foolish and give myself the giggles.

You’d think the scope for embarrassment would be relatively limited at a dentist’s office. You walk in, sit down, let them do whatever needs to be done, pay, and leave. Short of performing a spectacular pratfall on the way to the chair (and I didn’t), it’s a pretty predictable experience.

Going to the dentist isn’t a big deal for me. My teeth are good, and my dentist is excellent and super-nice to boot. But it turned out that my favourite dental hygienist had moved away so I was assigned a new one.

I don’t know whether I was adjusting to his unfamiliar technique or just having a particularly brain-dead day, but the way I carried on you’d think I’d never had my teeth cleaned before.

First there was the obligatory round of small talk with his fingers jammed in my mouth. I’m pretty sure both restaurant waitstaff and dental hygienists attend secret training courses so they can pinpoint the exact moment their mark’s client’s mouth is stuffed as full as possible. Then it becomes a sporting event to ask a question and watch, completely straight-faced, while the mark client struggles to respond intelligibly.

This guy was good. He didn’t even crack a smile while I mumbled stuff even I couldn’t decipher. Then he started the cleaning, with its usual routine of rinse-and-suction.

And I damn near drowned myself.

I drooled, sputtered, and almost sucked the side of my own face off with the suction tube. My bib was soaked, and fortunately he’d given me a tissue because I tipped my head a little too far and water ran out the corner of my mouth and into my right ear. Then I coughed up a gout of water that sprinkled my goggles and dampened the back of my collar before I could catch the waterfall with my tissue.

That made me giggle and try to say, “Geez, I didn’t think I needed another shower today”, but since I still had a small amount of water plus a couple of his fingers in my mouth, it came out as rhythmic gurgling and eruptions that made me look as though I was trying to emulate the fountains at Bellagio. (Though I’m pretty sure my version of fountain choreography will never succeed as a tourist attraction.)

But if there was a video camera hidden in the ceiling and if I’m right about the secret sporting society, my hygienist will be taking a bow at their awards dinner this year.

Well played, my friend. Well played.

* * *

P.S. Any time I think of dentists, I have a giggle at the old joke about the guy who’s at the dentist. The dentist gets out the drill and the guy reaches over, grabs the dentist by the balls, and says, “We wouldn’t want to hurt each other, would we, Doc?”

Rude Awakenings

March 11, 2015 / Diane Henders / 25 Comments

My husband deserves a medal. Not just for putting up with me on a daily basis (which in itself is medal-worthy), but for daring to sleep in the same bed as me. That’s an undertaking for none but a brave man.

I sleep well, but lightly. Some little corner of my subconscious always has an ear open, and my entire body is ready to leap awake at the slightest provocation. This is a problem, because there are lots of slight provocations during the night.

Dreams, for example. Depending on their content, it’s entirely possible that I might kick, punch, scream, or laugh myself awake. The laughing dreams are the best – I dream of something so hilarious that I’m laughing my ass off in my dream, only to wake with a guffaw. The kicking and punching dreams are another matter. I haven’t made contact with Hubby yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

I’ve farted myself awake, too. There’s nothing worse than bolting up in bed in the middle of the night thinking, “Ohmigod, something just came out of my ass! Did I just shit the bed?” (BTW, I never have. Just sayin’.)

Back when I had cats, I frequently woke up already on my feet and halfway out the bedroom door, dashing toward a location pinpointed in my ever-alert brain by the sound of a cat horking up a hairball.

I wake at the slightest noise from our back alley, which is annoying because there’s a green space near us and people, especially teenagers coming back from parties in the wee hours, tend to walk and talk boisterously there. I’d swear those voices are coming from just beyond the foot of the bed.

But the most dangerous situation for Hubby is this: sometimes I snore. That puts him in the unenviable position of trying to rouse me enough to make me stop snoring without actually waking me. It’s a losing battle.

The other night I lurched up in bed with a yell, eyes wide and fists clenched. Hubby recoiled. “I just barely whispered your name,” he explained. “I only wanted you to stop snoring.”

Clutching my chest over my hammering heart, I snapped, “Well, it worked!”

But the rudest awakening I’ve ever had was years ago when I was living alone. I owned a little two-storey crackerbox of a house with no air conditioning. There was a giant poplar tree in the back yard, which was great because I could leave the second-floor bedroom window and curtains open at night to get a breeze without worrying about privacy.

I was blissfully asleep one night when a hellish racket and a glare of brilliant light rocketed me out of bed to find the police helicopter hovering with its spotlight trained on my back yard.

That was seriously disturbing because it meant they were looking for a criminal and s/he was too close to my house for comfort; but equally disturbing was the fact that they were looking in my bedroom window with a spotlight bright enough to reveal every detail of my birthday suit.

I think that was around the time I started keeping a set of clothes within reach of the bed…

What was your rudest awakening?