Things That Go Bump In The Night

This past weekend, I spent approximately seven or so hours barely making a dent in the mound of grading that I somehow amassed but did not touch the week before.  It's not that I didn't try to touch it.  It was at the top of my to-do list every day.  Somehow, though, other things cut the line, and I found myself each afternoon rewriting "GRADE!!!!" at the top of the next day's to-do list.

Well, that can only last so long.  I finally broke down this weekend, and for the first time in a long time, I took work home.  This is a strict violation of my self-imposed "no work in the house" policy, but I just couldn't see myself getting it done at school at the rate I was going.  No need to incite riots from the parents who already hadn't seen a science grade yet this year...almost a month after school began.

Monday night, I brought things home again, to further claw away at my stack of ungraded papers, but upon arriving home, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Self: Grading is the worst!
Self: I know, but I really need to get this done.
Self: You hate doing work at home!
Self: What if I go into work early instead?
Self: You won't get enough sleep! Isn't 6am bad enough?
Self: What if I went to bed early, too?
Self: You hate going to bed early!  It makes you feel like an old person!
Self: I have no other options, self!!!!
Self: Fine. We'll go to bed at 9.

I didn't actually make it into bed until 9:30pm (because I am a slow writer and these blog posts don't type themselves), but with the help of another Benadryl, I quickly fell into a deep slumber...sometime shortly after my face went numb.

I've only done it twice, but I should probably stop using Benadryl for sleep.

Somewhere around 1am, I awoke to a loud "bang."  Now, my house has plenty of unique noises, and all of them sound like someone is trying to break in.  This was a new sound, though.  Maybe the new air filter?  It does click every time the air turns on.  But I heard that click after the loud bang.  Feeling unsure of what it could be, I got up.  Because the one time I don't get up will be the one time that someone actually IS trying to break in.

My first (reasonable) thought was that something had fallen in the bathroom.  I checked there (and used the toilet because Benadryl has a way of confusing priorities) before peeking out of the hallway into the living room towards the front door.  I remembered at this point that, on my way to the bathroom, I may have seen a light on in the front room--the light that's connected to a motion sensor on the porch.  In the half-asleep, half-doped state I was in, though, I couldn't be sure.

I allowed my head to barely pass the threshold into the dining room as I looked out toward the porch.  No one there.  I got closer to the door.  No one in the front yard or on the street either.  The slide lock was clearly latched, but I checked the door just in case.

Unlocked and barely open.

Even Benadryl couldn't stop me from freaking out ever so slightly.  I promptly shut the door completely and locked it, removed the key from the door, and quickly checked the back door, as well.  It was closed.  Locked.  No one around.

Deep breath, deep breath.

I got back into bed--what else could I do?--and went through the house's safety precautions in my mind: front door locked and slide-locked, wood posts nailed to window frames to keep the windows from opening more than a crack, back windows with ironwork over them, back door locked, door from kitchen to back room bolted shut.  Surprisingly, my worry quickly faded into face-numbing, benadryl-drunk sleep again.

Four and a half hours later, my alarm went off--much to my chagrin--and after a couple of snoozes, I finally pulled myself out of bed.  Looking back on my middle-of-night house check, I wondered if maybe I'd imagined the sound.  Sure, the door had been open, but that could've just been an error on our part; it's happened before.  I checked the air filter, in case that was it, but it was in the same place I'd installed it.  Nothing had fallen in the bathroom or any of the common areas.  My roommate never mentioned it, either.

I don't know what happened that night.  Maybe I dreamed it.  Maybe it was real.  Maybe it was a newly acquired house sound, like the air filter click or the recent ringing in the pipes after the toilet flushes.  I'll probably never know.  All I can say is: I got my eight hours of sleep, I finished a chunk of grading at school that next morning, and I have sure as hell triple-checked the front door lock every night since.