no nightlight big enough

We went out for a bit yesterday and came home to realize that we left the front door wide open. Uh. We have a storm door, which makes it really hard to even see if the door is open or not from the street, but still.

And it couldn't have been worse timing -- Dan left this afternoon for a week of training out of town.

Front door open
+ overactive imagination
+ home alone without husband
----------------------------------------
1 girl rocking in a corner practically sucking thumb
while envisioning various ways of meeting an untimely
demise at the hands of an intruder

My mom stopped by for a couple of hours late in the evening to help with Ms. Fussybritches, who seemed to know the instant her daddy left and let me know how she felt about the situation with incessant howling and not napping. While she was here, I inspected all of the closets, behind the shower curtain, looked under both beds, and even ventured down into the unfinished part of the basement. I was impressed at my bravery as I peered behind the scary furnace looking for whomever might be so bold as to enter someone's home in broad daylight, then camp out for over 8 hours. Though my rational mind knew that surely if someone had gotten in, they probably would have taken the opportunity to steal things and leave, or they would have grown weary of hiding and would have just come out and killed us already. Still, that didn't stop me from startling awake at every little creak of the house all night or jumping out of my skin when the cats leapt onto the bed.

It reminds me of the time when I lived alone that, upon being woken up in the middle of the night by a beeping noise I didn't recognize, I was convinced there was a murderer hiding in the loft closet sending and receiving text messages while waiting for the right moment to bludgeon me to death. What would they have said? "dude, wuz up? can't w8 2 kill da girl! c-ya." As it turned out, it was MY cell phone, sending out a sad, unfamiliar beep as the battery died.

I wonder if there's a category in the DSM for 35-year-olds who need a nightlight.