2:30 AM, and the house was still bustling: Daddy was in his bedroom, while Mother and I were out in the office. I love our office space. What was once used as the dining area, the office was transformed by replacing the dining table with a partners desk, and making the cabinets into bookshelves; it's a better use of space for our lifestyle (and, I'm proud to say, an idea I personally initiated). The windows in the space are phenomenal, spanning floor to ceiling, and overlooking a spacious courtyard (where I grow my geraniums), which opens onto our wooded back yard. I had just finished helping Mother locate an article about an upcoming Michael Vick appearance some of the animal rights activists she follows on Facebook plan to protest at, and decided now was a good time to look up proper care for my new bleeding heart plant (I finally found an established one! The only other time I had seen one, we were at Monticello, and couldn't bring it home with us; I snatched one up in Colorado as soon as I saw it!). Just as I arrived at the "can I plant my bleeding heart in a pot?" question, I saw movement out of our floor-to-ceiling windows. To see movement out of the corner of my eye is nothing new for me, so it took my fuzzy brain what felt like five minutes (when, I suppose, it was probably less than a second) to process that there was, indeed, something there.
I focused as well as I could without my glasses, particularly after spending an entire afternoon reading, to find a man standing at our back door.
Though I don't remember this, my mother tells me that, cool as a cucumber, I said to her "there's a man at our door". It felt like it took her ages to look at the giant black windows behind her, and that, apparently, the only thing that alerted her to the severity of this situation was that my eyes were "huge".
Screams of "THERE'S A MAN AT OUR DOOR" rang throughout the house as my mother scrambled to wake my father, who had fallen asleep in front of the television.
Apparently, when my mother asked the stranger what he wanted, he asked for someone by the name of Katie. Well, he certainly isn't going to find a Katie here. Perhaps she fell victim to the Rapture?
As the stranger ambled out of our courtyard, we dialed 911. The police came and went, and so did the stranger.
Everything is just fine now, except there are three people in this house that are incredibly paranoid. Even more so than before.
Cut us some slack, this happened an hour ago.
