Redneck ADT

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I get almost no alone time. I used to before COVID since I work from home, but now my entire family works from home. Hopefully, that will change this fall, but I’m not holding my masked breath.

So, when my hubby took on the task of moving Kid #2 into her college dorm this past week, I found myself in a happy little cone of silence as Kid #3 and #4 were with their other parent. No one interrupted my thoughts. No locating fridge items sitting in plain view. No arguments over curfews or what’s for dinner. I ate whatever I wanted with reckless abandonment and gave no thought to keeping others alive. It was awesome…until night fell.

It’s amazing how quiet a house is when the only noise being made is the tapping of a keyboard and crunching of Cheez-Its. The familiar sound of a neighbor’s car becomes louder, and the unfamiliar even louder. Rustling tree limbs swoosh the gutters and halt your breath for a moment, as the creaks and pops of a house turning in for the night remind you to check all the locks (again). Every click from an appliance and absurdly loud crash landing of an ice cube alerts you to the fact that you are most definitely, home alone.

But for all the noises you hear in a silent house, there’s almost always one that you can’t explain away. And of course, they present themselves right when you’re about to go to bed.

The screeeeeech of metal against metal once is likely a neighbor. But three times?

That’s for sure Krueger. 

I was already tired, and him showing up in my backyard meant there’d be no sleeping that night. “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…”

I texted my BFFs, who were quick to offer up their husbands as sacrificial investigative lambs, but it was late and I was sure my paranoia was just getting the best of me. Still, one can’t be too sure when the setting is ripe for a horror film.

After the adrenaline settled from checking the sliding glass door to my shadowy backyard, it was “not on my watch” time. I cleared the house room by room with my trusty SIG, then barricaded my badass into my bedroom. 

And by barricaded, I mean I set a redneck intruder warning system. 

Not my best work, but if that door opened those stools were gonna fly. Then I’d have approximately 0.75 seconds to stop screaming, rip off my eye mask and aim for whatever was coming through that door while clenching my night guard.

Pro Travel Tip: This alarm system also works at hotels.

Somewhere around 1 am I fell asleep, and as I awoke the next morning to the sound of the tyrant blue jay that lords over our bird feeders, I peeked out my eye mask to a perfectly intact stool stack.

I sent that pic to my hubby and let him know I survived my night a terror. A night he didn’t even know I was having. And once he stopped laughing, he informed me that before he left, he noticed the metal swing in the backyard needed to be greased again.

Keep it Golden, Girl. Especially when you’re home alone, drink too much wine, and mistake a yard swing for a razor glove-wearing psycho.

Golden Girls Episode Recommendation: S1E8 Break-In

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