I’m a self diagnosed worry wart and the power of suggestion is a VERY powerful thing to my over active imagination.  Darn all those years devouring books and stretching my fantasy world.

A few weeks ago, we had a pretty interesting night that all started when Chris and I innocently went to bed naively expecting a quiet night of sleep.  After all, our crazy kids were sleeping over at mom’s so it meant guaranteed uninterrupted slumber with the possibility of sleeping in if I so wished.

We went to bed around 10:30, and of course Chris started snoozing right away.  My mind was still going ninety to nothing as it most nights, but just as I was dozing off I heard a noise.  I opened my eyes and listened intently… nothing.  I rationalized my creeping fears and just as I was dozing off again… another noise. A LOUD noise.

What made this all much worse in my mind was that my kids weren’t home, and Chris was out like a light right next to me, so I knew there wasn’t a logical explanation for ANY noises.

The noises and I played this back and forth teasing game for quite a while.  I kept hearing them on and off but couldn’t quite convince myself that my overactive imagination wasn’t at fault.

Finally about midnight, I couldn’t take it any longer.  My imagination had run the gamet, and I was WIDE awake ready for the murderer to come bursting in the room.

I jostled my poor peacefully sleeping hubby and whispered… “I keep hearing noises.”

Silence…

Well, maybe he grunted.

I tried again with another whisper… “LOUD noises!”

That got me a sort of gravelly, monotone, “What do you want me to do.”

I answered with a feeble, “I’m having a really hard time going to sleep.”

So up my devoted hubby got and bravely, albeit groggily, stumbled out to face whatever unknown lay out there making those dern noises.

I sat up huddled in bed anxiously awaiting the results of my 2 hours of wildly uncontrollable paranoia. I waited, eyes peeled out toward the hallway and waited and waited.  Nothing.

I secretly was happy he was not trotting right back to bed because that surely meant HE had heard something too.

Suddenly out of nowhere he came bounding back to the bedroom.  Did I say bounding?  I meant some sort of high stepping, knees to the chin sprint that was a sight to see from my previously sound asleep  hubby at midnight.

You have no idea how badly I wish I had that on video.  I have attempted to re-enact it a few times, though Chris insists that is NOT how he looked.  He chose to explain it away as a type of football drill.  I think he just knew he had won the argument at “football drill.”

So back to the REASON for the tragically unrecorded midnight hubby high step.

I’m sure my eyes were as big as saucers when he joined me on the safety of the bed. I uttered a stunned but loud whisper, “What was it?!”

He didn’t ease much of my paranoia when he said, “I don’t know, but it had a tail this long!”  He held up his hand showing about 12 inches.

The offending long tailed “intruder” was sitting in front of our washer on a pack of pepsis. Can you imagine the nerve? Just sitting there breathing in and out.

At that point, I started to panic that my laid back hubby was about to suggest we just close our bedroom door and go happily on to dream land.  His plan ended up being at least closing the laundry room door and stuffing a towel at the bottom.

I wasn’t feeling that idea, so he appeased me by stuffing more towels, a case of water bottles, and a kitchen chair to the door.

Though he tried to reassure me by saying that there was NO way the long tailed intruder would be able to squeeze under the laundry room door.

The next day, Chris had to meet with a wildlife guy who was confident that a) our long tailed intruder was a possum, and b) it would still be in the laundry room.

He was half right because it was a possum, but our guest was no longer residing with us.

Wildlife Nature guy set some traps for us and promised to come back and check them.  Apparently our possum had crawled up through the dryer vent and gotten it dislodged from the back of the dryer.  He was then climbing around and falling willy nilly all over the random things shoved on either side of our washer/dryer.  It’s shocking really that he managed to escape back out of there alive.

Our cages stayed empty for about a week until Wildlife guy texted Chris this picture showing that our possum house guest had officially been evicted.

Hoo to the Ray.

The moral of the story is this… find yourself a man that will get up at midnight and perform football drills for you.

That’s when you know you’ve got a keeper, folks.

Or, at least, that’s what the possum told me.

Linking up with these fab peeps… Weekend Bloggy Link up, Five Days Five Ways, & Positively Splendid.