We got into bed later than we should have. \u00a0 Lori had been busy helping bail me out of a commitment that I had made far beyond my abilities to complete and we didn\u2019t move to the place of nocturnal respite until well after 10:30. \u00a0 Katrina was working a late shift until 12:30 and someone was going to need to drive over to the store to bring her home. \u00a0 Lori set her alarm for 12:35 to allow her the time necessary to get there at 12:40 as Katrina had requested. \u00a0 I kept my clothes nearby and did not remove my contacts as I lay down planning, uncharacteristically, to run the late night errand under the heavy weight of my guilt and gratitude.<\/p>\n
The ringing telephone awakened us at 12:25, even before Lori\u2019s alarm sounded. \u00a0 Apparently Katrina was able to slip away from the work environment a few minutes earlier than was previously expected. \u00a0 I climbed out of bed and slipped on the clothes necessary for the cold late night drive and made my way out the bedroom door. \u00a0 My contacts were still foggy as I felt my way down the stairs, blinking all the while to try and moisten the uncooperative lenses. \u00a0 At the bottom of the steps I was reaching out to get the car keys from their hook when suddenly my skin went cold and a compressing pang engulfed my chest. \u00a0 There before me, directly next to the key rack, in my house, in the early morning darkness a man stood silhouetted against the dim light of the kitchen window. \u00a0 Who was this? \u00a0 Why was he here? \u00a0 What was he doing at this hour, uninvited and unwelcome in my home? \u00a0 He did not move; he did not speak; he only stood like a statue staring into my undoubtedly rapidly whitening face. \u00a0 Before a thought could cross my semi-sleeping mind, I heard a startled yelp escape my throat as I thrust my left hand up into a defensive position and my right hand shot forward to impact the intruder just below the chin. \u00a0 I snapped my left heel toward his groin, but hit him somewhere about mid-thigh. \u00a0 He reeled backwards across the open area of the kitchen, his head separating silently in mid-air from his shoulders and bouncing into the cabinet as his body slammed against the floor and slid to a stop just below the sink where it lay motionless looking so very oddly in the dim light like a wooden step ladder collapsed and harmless now across the room. \u00a0 Some three feet away a pile of Christmas garland seemed to be staring back at its erstwhile torso. \u00a0 My right hand throbbed with repeated bolts of pain. \u00a0 I thought it might be broken, but later research would reveal only scrapes and bruises.<\/p>\n
I felt empty, a little foolish standing there in the darkness of the midnight, but as I turned to walk away I comforted myself with the reassuring thought that because of my diligence, my decisive response, this morning in a less than perfect world, one more family was safe from the rampages of common household hardware gone terribly awry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We got into bed later than we should have. \u00a0 Lori had been busy helping bail me out of a commitment that I had made far beyond my abilities to complete and we didn\u2019t move to the place of nocturnal …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}