Remember Henry the Elf?

A strange thing happened to me last week.

I was on my own, The Big Guy having headed off for some shore leave, and I was tucked in with full control of the tv remote and some knitting. In other words, Bliss.

I had a great afternoon with the Things, got them into bed on time, settled in with my blinding knitting light....

and without warning, there was a crash on my desk, clear across the room.

The desk is high. There are no windows around it. The cat was in my lap.

My first thought was "Eeek, mouse"!

But I can spot a spider 40 feet away, and there was no sign of mouse. I hastily got up (with cat) to survey the area. Bravely (with cat) moved filing boxes out from under the desk (it's a massive roll-top desk). No droppings anywhere. No mouse cowering anywhere. No sign of anything.

And I am always on high alert for mouse. If there was one turd in this house, I'd have found it long before it had a chance to dry, or possibly before it fell.

The only disturbance was this guy:

He was laying on his back, and all that...stuff...around him was knocked over.

I laughed (nervously), righted the picture frames and old sea urchin shells (why do I have those again? They're all over my yard, do I have to have them crumbling their little sea urchin dust all over my desktop?), and said, " Behave yourself, Henry!".

I got all the way back across the room when that feeling hit me.

You know the one.

Like someone's watching you.

I watch a lot of horror movies.

Moving with full and complete confidence, in order to distract the evil spirits, I moved into the kitchen and calmly picked up my cell phone, a cordless phone, and a very large cutting implement. 

I then had to walk, feigning bravado, across the living room, past the corner of the desk-around which a distinct cloud of evil-ness swirled.

I tried not to break into a run at the foot of the stairs (a crucial escape-moment in any horror movie worth its salt), but I was moving pretty fast by then, and fooling no one.

I took the stairs pretty much 2-at-a-time, a move I couldn't coordinate on a good day on steroids, and yet managed not to break my neck. 

No, of course that would only thwart and irritate the Evil.

It wasn't until I was safely ensconced in my room with lines of communication to the outside world intact and weapons in hand that I realized...my babies were out there.

One on each floor.

Panic. Heavy breathing. Sweating. 

As the shaking began, the phone rang. Oh no! The evil is calling, like 'The Ring'!

I grabbed the phone, hit the talk button. 

Because even in a self-induced panic, sleeping babies are a priority. No phone is allowed to wake up a kid in my house!

It was Tammy. Telling me some funny thing one of the kids had done or said. I sort of wasn't listening, glued as I was to the door and tuning in to any Evil Vibes approaching my bedroom.

She kept talking.

She asked me something about a link to a website, or some such computer-related thing, and I looked it up on my laptop.

It turned out to be just the distraction I needed.

I kept her on the phone for about 2 hours, reading random nonsense from the computer. I mean real and true nonsense, like explaining a you tube video I saw, and Googling weird words.

I read an email from my Mother to her, some dumb joke.

When I ran out of steam, I read old blog posts to her.

She either was watching tv and ignoring me, sensing that I had Evil right outside my bedroom door, or was really asleep with the phone on, mumbling unconsciously at the appropriate moments.

Either way, it worked for me.

I almost told her about Henry the Elf coming to life like the evil little puppets in Puppetmaster,

and the 8 sequels to it.

But, you know, I didn't want her to think I was crazy or anything.