Can't Have Manslaughter Without Laughter

Gather around, and allow me to tell you a story.  A story that would have ended in me probably going to jail.

Anyone who has read this blog, who knows me, who has spent like fifteen minutes with me, knows that I am extremely paranoid.  I'm talking some "She could really use some Lithium" paranoia.  My paranoia is the reason that Husband purchased a baseball bat for me.  Those times when he has to go out of town, when I'm alone in the house and nobody would probably check on me for a few days, I put the bat by the bed, in case of all the horrible things that could come get me.

I'm not just talking about serial killers or Jehovah's Witnesses.  I'm of course protected against the evil things of the night.  The vampires, the werewolves, the Rebecca Blacks.  Should they come after me, I was prepared with my bat, all of course taking for granted that nothing would kill me, drink my blood, sing crappy tone-deaf pop music before I could wake up.

This is just on a typical day.  Other days, we'd add in trolls or George Bush Jr.

I never thought that I would ever actually have to use the bat.  Frankly, for over a year it sat near the bed, only moved when I had to clean, and then replaced after a few practice swings that narrowly miss a curious cat who is too dumb to get out of the way.  But a morning not too long ago, I was actually called upon to use the bat.

Having taken Husband to work, I curled back up into bed to get a few more hours of sleep.  The normal ritual would have been that if Husband was coming home early, he would never remember his house key, and would ring the doorbell until I answered the door.  So when I was woken up from a deep sleep by someone walking around downstairs, it NEVER occurred to me that it was him.

For a moment I had to decide whether to call the cops, go investigate, or piss myself, knowing that someone was in my house after I had locked the doors.  So I finally crawled out of bed, grabbing the baseball bat as quietly as I could.  At this point it was all speculation as to who would be there, and what if it were some confused elderly person who knows how to pick locks?  I couldn't just call the cops.

Could have been one of these too.  Still preferable to half the shit I was thinking about.

So I began heading down the steps, and then the real terror began.  I heard the intruder heading for our brand new television.  All at once, any sympathy I had for this person vanished.  I was going to break some bones, dislocate some joints.  Because I fucking love that television.

In my pretty pink butterfly pajamas, I crept down the stairs, bat over my shoulder.  I was deciding whether I wanted to let out a war cry or not when I heard the bastard leave the living room and go into the kitchen.  Had he heard me?  Was he going to try to slaughter me with my Pampered Chef knives?  Then I heard the fridge open.

Of all the cocky bastards....he was going to make a sandwich before coming to kill me and taking my TV. 

I got to the bottom of the steps and lifted the bat over my head as I walked into the living room, listening to the serial killer thief sandwich maker putting cheese on his bread.  By this time, I was pretty sure this person did not need to kill me, because I was pretty damn close to a heart attack before even getting near the kitchen.

So I'm almost to the kitchen, and I was readying my battle cry when two steps and out pops Husband, sandwich in hand.  I was so shocked I dropped the bat on the floor and just sat down and sobbed.  When he asked why, through bites of sandwich, I explained how he had scared the living hell out of me and if I had been any braver, I would have swung first and asked questions later.

This sleeping kitten is an accurate portrayal of how threatening I was.

I tried to explain how he had not called out when he came in, which was explained away by how he did not want to wake me; how he had gotten in with the doors locked and how he had remembered his key; not to mention how he went to the television first and of course, how he had been picking up something off the entertainment system mantle.  All of it just him changing his routine.  And I'd have bashed his skull in.

At least Husband was kind enough to not laugh at me until after I stopped crying.

Adventures in Self-Torture

So there I was, sweating, breathless, surrounded by men.  We're all breathing hard, the physical exertion enough to keep us glistening and tired.  I only wish going to the gym was as much fun as it sounds in my dirty, dirty mind.

I am a newbie to this whole gym thing.  I have the rhythm down, I know enough to not stare at the guys who have biceps bigger than my head, and to wipe down the machines when I'm done.  I also know enough to take my own water, and that turning up my music is not a sin when the constant clatter and whir of machinery threatens to send me into a paranoid insanity where I'm absolutely certain that they're all living death machines that survive off human pain and suffering.

This is what most people imagine before ACTUALLY going to the gym.  Complete with bustle.

But since the music takes care of that, I'm far more paranoid that someone is watching me at the gym.  Not because I am particularly good looking, but because I feel like I don't belong.  The gym is full of skinny women in spandex that wouldn't even make a tube top for me and men who can bench press my considerable weight without flinching.  Husband tries to reassure me that this is not the case, and conversations generally go in the direction of:

Me:  I hate that everyone looks at me.  I'm sure they're all thinking "How dare that fat girl try to come in here and take responsibility for her physical health!"

Husband:  I doubt they're thinking that at all.

Me:  But they have to be!  I don't belong!

Husband:  Dear, if they're staring, it's because you have pink hair, tattoos, and a five carat wedding ring on your hand.

...Touche, husband.  Touche.

This is fairly acurate.  I swear.

The truth of the matter is that people there are probably more concerned with their own physical fitness and their own training than they are in one pink-haired fat girl.  Nobody probably notices me, and if they do, chances are they only see camaraderie, or someone taking responsibility for their own life.  And if they're thinking something snide and mean, well, what does that particularly have to do with me?  Why the hell do I care about what one meat head thinks?

So I go to the gym and come home wheezing like a beached manatee, making the "Please, dear merciful God, if you exist, push me back out to see" whimpering noise.  It frightens the cat.  Husband has learned to just walk past my melodramatic display of agony and sea creature noises.  He'll have none of my nonsense.  Especially since he knows that in twenty minutes and a shower later, I'll be back to normal.

Today does stick out in my mind though.  Mostly because there was this woman at the gym who literally looked like she was skin and bones.  The kind of person who would benefit from an additional twenty pounds of weight or so.  But there she was, two treadmills away from me.  That wasn't the weird part though.  The weird part was that she had the treadmill at such a level that it was nearly 90 degrees into the air, and she was clinging to the display panel for dear life as she climbed it.

I began looking around, wondering if she maybe needed help, but nobody else seemed concerned.  So I broke my own gym etiquette rules, and I kept an eye on this woman with my peripheral vision.  Mostly because I was absolutely certain that she was going to miss one of her steps and go shooting off that thing like a cat on waxed counter top. 

This was not something I wanted to miss.

This is EXACTLY what I thought would happen.  If I were lucky.

My imagination ran with the news story that would obviously occur to cover a woman flying off a treadmill at speeds that propelled her through the row of elliptical machines and into the wall (oh the humanity), where I would be the only witness, and I could tell them all how concerned I was for her, so I kept an eye on her from the very beginning.  It's entirely possible that I got a little lost in these thoughts, because next thing I knew, she was gone.

I searched all around, and realized that she indeed had not flown off the treadmill, but had obviously finished her work out.  So I finished my own, slightly disappointed, and went down to the locker room to get my things to leave.  I should have never allowed myself to believe that I was going to be left disappointed.  Because there she was in the women's locker room, right as you walk in.  Butt naked.

I love it when things come full circle.

Insanity Runs In The Blood

Husband is the first to admit that I am insane.  He deals with the paranoia, depression, anxiety, and general craziness with the fortitude of a man who has faced the fires of Hell and its minions and has never batted an eye.  There is nothing he can't handle, from my crying jags to my insane insistance that the people across the street have used cake in order lure in people who they then kill in bathtubs of coleslaw.  But last night, even he was unable to deal with this new form of insanity.

For it was not I that was mad.

Oh no. 

The culprit this time is our new kitten.  For a week she had been a sweet, rational thing made of gray fluff and four paws. 

Last night changed all that. 

I went to bed, as usual, with the laptop so I could finish up what I was working on in the comfort of my bed.  Instead of crawling up next to me and passing out as she's done for the past week, Cinder decided that there was something WRONG. 

I was approached by a ball of fur and fury unlike anything I had ever witness.  She had her back arched and her tail poofed like a bottle brush, and every movement was a threat.  Every sidestepping turn and she was staring at me like I was the shower monster, about to come spray her down with water and kitty shame.  I was going to eat her, and she was going to take my ass down.

Sitting in bed, I watched as she leapt over throw pillows and curled in boxes, all in order to plan her attacks.  And what exactly did these attacks amount to?  Slightly more vicious versions of "OMG, you have TOES!".  I was unimpressed.

So she decided to start threatening me by staring at the walls for inordinate amounts of time, and then turning and sprinting out of the room at the highest possible speed, making a noise similar to that of a rhinocerous with a broken leg falling down the steps while running down into the first floor of the house.  She then returned, making this a lap of sorts.  I swear, she lapped the house a total of 1, 433 times before returning to my room and arching her back again.

Now it was time to avoid the air vent.  The air vent is apparently more evil than I am, because she would smoosh into the corner between the bed and the wall where I was and stare at the air vent in the floor, skittering around it like she would drop into New Jersey or the seventh level of Dante's Hell if she stepped on the metal grating.  I finally just shook my head and turned off the light to go to sleep.

Reluctant, and obviously exhausted from two hours of kitten rampage, she decided to begrudgingly settle down on the bed with me.  Not near my hands nor my vicious maw, mind you, but on the bed.  In the morning, she was gone, like an assassin in the night.  Or that guy I picked up at a Seven 11 the other week.

Anyway, I have come up with a theory as to why the kitten decided to go absolutely batshit nuts.  It's actually quite simple.  She's just as crazy as me.  I adopted a cat just like me, just as they say people marry people who remind them of themselves.  The one I picked waited for me to fall in love with her, and then showed her true colors.  Insanity.  Kitten insanity.

I wonder if they make kitty Thorazine.

Paranoia, Everybody's Coming To Get Me

I am the first to admit I have a paranoia problem. 

If in public, I think everyone is looking at me, judging me on how my hair is curled or how pretty my make up is, and that they all magically know that my thoughts are perpetually filled with unicorns, sex, and Tim Horton's.  I also assume that I'm just so bursting with excellence that anyone cares what the fuck I'm doing in the midst of trying to survive their own lives.

At home, my paranoia is even worse.

I have an entire list of problems that have to do with my paranoia at home, even though we live in the safest place possible.  We live on a frickin' army base, and yet I still have things to worry about.  Here is a run-down of the things that bother me in my own home:

1.  The creepy little door in the guest room - Yes, it's just a door, albeit a creepy little door, and it's blocked off from the inside so that nobody can get into the crawlspace and hide bodies there.  The army frowns upon that.  But I swear to God, it's going to open some day and something is going to come out and try to get me.  Thus, I always have the guest room door closed.  Because anything ready to eat my soul obviously won't be able to turn a doorknob.

2.  The neighbors across the street - Have I met these people?  ...No.  Which only suffices to ensure that my theory is right.  They're serial killers.  I watch Criminal Minds, I know it's not always the creepy motherfucker who talks to a rotten peanut on the street corner that is apt to kill an innocent housewife.  And the fact that they have never said hello, and that they are active only at night is proof that they are either plotting to kill me, or they are too busy strangling innocent co-eds in bathtubs full of cole slaw to be bothered with me.  Case closed.

3.  The creaks and shit - This house settles more on its own than any house ought to.  I can be woken up at four in the morning because I'm absolutely certain that someone has broken in, stabbed my husband in his sleep when I can't even walk past him without waking him up, and is now coming for me.  And the creaking and shit is LOUD.  It sounds like someone is falling through the goddamn floor!  What the fuck is up with that?

4.  Husband's former roommate - At one time, my husband allowed a fellow soldier to board with him for some extra cash each month to pay for our wedding.  Said roommate turned out to be a seriously messed up fucker.  He got married, brought the girl all the way to Canada from Germany, then left her alone and cheated on her and swore he was doing the right thing the whole time.  He then moves in with my husband, buys a dog and...well, I don't even want to think about it.  Anyway, Husband kicked him out.  Now I'm afraid some dark night this former roommate will return, key in hand, sneak in, and stab/rape us in our sleep.  And not necessarily in that order.

5.  The MPs - No, I've never met the military police.  Nor would there be any reason for them to be coming to our door.  But I am always paranoid that the cops are comin' to get me.  I'm just that awesome that I'd be arrested for being awesome.  And I have images of women's prison in Canada being similar to the hole of a Siberian gulag.  Cold and full of prisoner rape and ugly tattoos.

6.  Strangers who knock on our door - Every once and a while, a stranger will knock on our door.  I do the only logical thing, and hide where I can't be seen.  This is usually in the space between the wall in the kitchen and the fridge.  Because that's how the serial killing rapists who want to nail my dead body get inside.  They come to the door like service professionals.  I'm on to you, serial killing necrophiliac rapists.

7.  Children - The local children freak me the fuck out.  Because kids freak me the fuck out.  And I'm always worried they're going to come to the door with their little Canadian accents and I won't be able to understand what they're saying and they'll run off and cry to their fathers/mothers/crazy uncles who will come and punch me in the face.  Very real fear here.

I'm sure I have more problems with the house, but that's because when I lived alone, I lived in apartments about the size of a shoebox.  I could see everything and I never left so I knew nobody could have gotten in.

Oh, sleepless paranoid nights, I'm on to you.