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False Alarm

Today I watched two very dramatic episodes of Home and Away.

Bobbi Morgan gets in a fight with her husband Frank. She wants to go out for the evening. He wants to stay home with Bobbi cooking their dinner.  They fight. She walks out.

While Bobbi's away, there's a fire at their house.  It's assumed Frank was in the house and has perished. There are lots of tears and regret, plus some catatonic behavior.

Then, in the end, Frank appears. He's alive! It turns out he left the house to get some dinner.

His death didn't happen. No need to grieve. It was a false alarm...which kind of sums up my weekend.

On Friday, I had a medical-related freak out. I won't go into details, but I'll just say it was pretty much a matter of me losing the plot.  For one or two hours, I thought my whole world was collapsing. Then I realized I wasn't looking at things correctly. Sometimes it's painful to realize you're wrong about something, but this was one of those cases where I was very happy to be wrong.

Then....

On Saturday night, past one in the morning, our alarm went off.  I woke up absolutely terrified.

As luck would have it, Tim wasn't there.  He was out on a birthday weekend field trip with his brother-in-laws.

I had no idea what to do. I mean I had ideas, but it was all a panicked mess.

First I went to Jack.  He was still sleeping despite the very loud alarm. I tried to wake him. He moaned a bit,  but showed no signs of really waking.  I told his sleeping self that we were going to lock ourselves in the master bedroom.  But then I listened more carefully to our alarm, because it actually talks. It tells you what part of your house has been compromised.  Well, in our case it was the Master bedroom window. No point hiding in there.

That being said, I had been awaked from that room and didn't hear any door opening, so I had some feeling that it might be a false alarm.  I was scared, though, that someone was in our backyard TRYING to open doors. I probably wouldn't hear that in my sleep.

I'm not sure if this was a smart move, but I went ahead and turned off the alarm.  When the alarm company called, I told them I wasn't sure what happened. But I gave them our code, thinking if I have more reasons to freak out, I can call the police.

The main reason I made this move is a few years back the same thing happened—again with Tim out of town.  I had the police come, and Tim acted a bit annoyed about that.

I think next I called Tim, but it was like one of my dreams where I'm struggling to make a phone call and can't make it happen. I was probably shaking too much, and my phone has so many apps.  It took some time for me to find the phone app.

Anyway, I finally called him.

He wanted me to check the doors.

I was really too scared to go peaking behind curtains that might be hiding a serial killer or boogeyman.

What Tim wanted, pretty much, is for me to act the part of a character in a horror movie....the one that gets yelled at by the audience.

At some point, Tim got the idea that the alarm could be saying master bedroom, but other rooms might be included in that message.  Why does it have to be so confusing?  I guess to keep us on our toes?

He asked if I had gone outside on the upstairs porch earlier in the day.

Yes, I had.

But  I was pretty sure I had locked the door.

He wanted me to check.

He suggested I turn on all the lights?

Why, Tim?

Because it will make you feel safe.

I was wondering how the hell light would protect me if there's some kind of monster upstairs?  I told him as far as I can remember, the only monster killed by light is gremlins.  If it's a zombie or serial killer, light isn't going to do much.

Still...you know what.  I did it anyway. I gathered up courage and went up there by myself to check the door.  I guess I was too tired and out of it to talk myself out of being a horror movie character.

I found the door unlocked and it was a struggle to get it closed and locked.  It seemed likely that it was a matter of me not locking the door correctly during the day; then the wind (or a ghost) opened it.

After that, it took me an hour or so to get back to sleep, because I heard noises and they made me very jumpy.  I was still not 100% convinced that there wasn't someone (or something) lurking in the house.

It all turned out fine.  I was brave enough to check the doors on my own. I didn't have to resort to calling the police. I handled things okay on my own with my husband out of town.

But if there had been someone in the house, I would have been the stupid girl who should have just let the police respond to the alarm.

It's so damn hard to know when to seek help and when to say it's fine; don't turn it into a big messy drama.


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