So I was minding my own business, sitting in the garage, studying my balls off when I heard Matt from the kitchen holler, “what on earth happened to all my cold beer!”
Blast! Panic! A few days earlier a friend of mine had sent me a link showing me various useful beauty tips using beer. So after Matt went to bed I decided to experiment around with a few ideas. (Some even worked. Bwahaha.)
I considered a variety of lies. I could claim to have drank them but he would know I was being a liar on account of the fact that I haven’t been drunk since I chugged three beers in one hour a few weeks ago. I could claim we had been robbed but figured that would be a little extreme. I could tell him that he drank them but I think he knows he doesn’t go through like, fifteen beers in two days.
“I love you!” I hollered from the garage.
“I love you too,” he said, “what happened to all my beer?”
“OK, I can explain,” I started.
“Here we go,” he sighed and looked genuinely annoyed as he sat down.
“I drank all of those things,” I told him.
“You did not.”
I considered telling him I gave them to the less fortunate but decided to stop being deceptive.
“I made a beer bath for my feet.”
“WHAT? Why on earth would you do that?”
I explained the e-mail and how my feet have been all itchy and dry and gross.
“I kind of rinsed my hair with a few of them too. It’s supposed to make your hair shiny.”
He just looked at me and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. Probably both.
“Why didn’t you use the things that are made for your hair and feet?” he asked.
“I just want to be beautiful!” I shrieked at him, hoping to make him believe I was about to throw a fit so he’d leave me alone.
“You are beautiful,” he said, “if you want to do weird girly stuff do it with your own beer.”
“What’s yours is mine. And what’s mine is mine,” I told him.
“False. I don’t care if you drink my cold beers. Drink as many as you want. That’s what they’re there for. I’d rather you not waste them on your feet and hair though,”
“I will buy you more,” I told him.
I fished a twenty out of my wallet and gave it to him.
“Oh, you’re going to make me go get it after you used it all taking a bath in it?”
“It was a foot and hair soak!” I told him, “and I’m studying. Don’t you want me to do well in school so I can buy you stuff someday?”
He shook his head at me and took off. I had honestly planned on replacing his “delicious cold beers” that day but was so busy running errands that I forgot. Oh well. Tee Hee.
Anyway, so after the whole cold beer hoopla, I got back to work studying and Matt got to work building the bedroom he’s working on. We’ve kind of become creatures of the night lately, me staying up until three and four studying and him working on the house or working nights. The other night, after midnight my neighbor walked up to the garage and saw me.
“I saw the light on and figured you were sitting out here studying,” she said, “why do you always sit in the garage?”
“I dunno,” I said, plopping my giant textbook onto my pile of binders, books, and notes, “I think I just love the weather right now.”
“Well, I wanted to come tell you that a girl a few houses down had a peeping tom in her back yard last night.”
She went on to tell me that someone had hopped her large privacy fence in the back yard and was looking at her through a window. When she saw him she screamed for her dad who ran into the back yard but the guy hopped the fence and ran away.
I felt shudders as I remembered someone a few days ago ringing the doorbell twice and each time I went to answer it no one was there. I remember a few days before that I had been studying and was positive I heard someone messing with the front door. I grabbed Jake from the back yard and went to investigate and no one was there. I went back inside and about twenty minutes later there was a loud “thud” on the front door, like someone hit it and Jake went insane and when I finally pulled him back from the door to look through the peep hole, no one was there. My neighbor and I reassured each other that our ferocious animals would never allow someone in our back yards and she went home.
Anyway, so it was about 2:30 in the morning and I was studying and Matt was piddle farting in the kitchen. The kitchen door was open because he kept going from the kitchen to the garage, working on something manly. I was focused on writing up a study guide to help me with some weird seven page poem when I saw a guy walking in the road with a flashlight. He stopped right outside the garage and shone the flashlight right in my face.
“Matt! MATT!” I hollered, and Matt calmly and quickly left the kitchen and went towards the road. “I see, babe,” he said.
The dude hurried off down the road and I heard Matt stop him and the two of them talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was very worried that this person was going to shoot Matt or something and wondered if I should go assist him. I decided the chances of this person shooting Matt in the front road were slim and figured Matt would not like me going near this possible lunatic. After a few minutes Matt came back and said, “He said he saw two dogs running around in the alley and was looking for them.”
About five minutes before, our two dogs had gotten out of the side gate and came straight to the garage. This person apparently claimed he saw them in the alley, which would be impossible. First of all, the only way the dogs could get to the alley is if they back part of the gate opened and they got out the side. Second, I heard their dog tags as they came from around the house to happily greet me.
“He was probably watching the house and saw them!” I cried to Matt, horrified, “And even if his story is true and he really did see two dogs in the alley, why would he get out a flashlight and just be wondering around the neighborhood looking for them at 2:30 in the morning? That doesn’t make since. He’s probably a pedophile or something!”
“I’m going to go drive around and see if I can find him. I told him it wasn’t a good idea for him to be walking around with a flashlight. If I see him again I’ll call the cops. You call me if that guy comes back and you can always protect yourself with this.”
He showed me a giant sword thing and I envisioned a possible attacker yanking it from my terrified paws and gutting me.
“Get that thing away from me,” I told him.
He shrugged and headed to his truck.
“Don’t get murdered!” I cried to him as he left and wondered if the lunatic would come back to kill me once Matt left. Matt left and getting back to homework was not going to happen. I pondered what this stranger had said. He said two blocks down he saw two dogs in the alley. Why on earth would anyone care enough about two random dogs to leave the house in the middle of the night with a flashlight and be lurking around the neighborhood looking for them? And why would he stop outside my garage and shine the flashlight into it? I looked around, wondering if he was in the bushes somewhere watching me. It seemed pretty weird that our two dogs had just escaped the side fence (Matt never did figure out how the gate was opened; it’s always locked) and then this random dude told Matt he was out looking for two dogs. Fifteen minutes went by and I decided perhaps this lunatic had murdered Matt and I called him.
“I was just about to call you. I’m on my way home,” he said.
“Were you killed?” I asked, practically trembling, “I thought maybe he got you.”
“I am a warrior and that guy isn’t going to get me. I’m nearly home.”
He got home and told me he had seen some neighbors from way down the street talking in the front. Matt told them about what happened and they said they knew who this guy was and that he was a very strange guy who lives with his parents.
“Do you believe he was maybe special needs or something?” I asked Matt.
“I don’t know but he didn’t act like he was all there. He told me his name,” Matt said, sitting down. He started searching Lubbock County sex offenders to see if the dude was a pedophile of some sort. I did the same.
I thought of one of my uncles who strangers might consider strange. He’s had a lot of brain damage due to seizures and diabetes. Someone who didn’t know him might think he was a lunatic perhaps, even though he’s the sweetest person in the world.
“I think tomorrow we need to go talk to his parents and tell them it isn’t safe for their son to be wondering around in the middle of the night with a flashlight. Especially with the way weird things have been happening in the neighborhood…perhaps he’s totally harmless.”
“I think he’s harmless sweetie, just a weird guy.”
I imagined him looking into my children’s bedroom windows at night and watching them.
“I want bars on the windows of the kids’ room,” I said, “and an alarm system.”
I searched more sex offenders and was disgusted to see I knew one from the bar I work at.
“Sweetie, they don’t need bars outside their windows but if you’d like, we can look into an alarm system. With the dogs, I don’t think it’s necessary but if it’ll make you feel better, we’ll put one in.”
“A psychotic killer could poison the dogs or shoot them or something,” I said, “what if he saw Caleb when he was here and it waiting for the kids to come back? What if he breaks into their window and steals them?”
“Well, if we have an alarm then it’ll scare anyone who breaks a window. And me and Jake wouldn’t let some lunatic steal the kids.”
“I would cheerfully murder someone who tried to hurt my kids…or my grandma.”
I felt bad for leaving grandpa out but considering he goes everywhere with at least one gun on his person and probably sleeps with multiple loaded guns no more than a reach away, I figure people probably wouldn’t mess with him.
Matt and I searched every sex offender in Lubbock and that guy wasn’t on there.
“Maybe he hasn’t been caught yet,” I told Matt.
“Sweetie, I think he’s harmless. I’ve been meaning to go buy a gun for the house for a while now. I’ll do that tomorrow. If some freak tried to get in here and hurt you or the kids I’ll destroy them.”
“Well, as soon as the kids get here we need to have a discussion with them about whatever guns you decide buy. And I want them totally concealed and put up where they can’t reach them. And the safety kept on and we need to have lots of talks with them about what to do if for whatever reason they find one of them.”
I was a little uneasy with the thought of loaded guns being stashed around the house with two little kids running around. I believe the possession of a gun would be pointless if they were all unloaded. If we needed one quick, we’d be murdered in the process of loading our own guns.
“I want them kept in the bedroom, on the very top shelf of the closet. And I want a rule that the kids are to never, ever enter our room without one of us with them. And we need to show them the guns and explain everything.”
“Baby, I know how to handle a gun around kids,” he said, reminding me again that he was a warrior.
I have been around guns since I was little. A lot of my friends’ dad’s were cops and I grew up shooting guns and learning gun safety and knew better than to ever even touch a gun unless a grown up was teaching me how to shoot one. Most men I knew had at least one rifle behind the seat in their truck and guns and rifles stashed all over their houses and barns. My own grandpa has always enjoyed his own slew of rifles and pistols. He used to keep them behind his bedroom door but after my aunt and I started popping out children, he locked them up in a fancy gun cabinet. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing my grandpa’s guns until I was a teenager. I know when used responsibly and correctly, guns are a very good tool to have to protect yourself and your family. When handled with irresponsibility and recklessness, horrible things can happen. I am the most high strung person I know when it comes to my kids and Matt is very tedious about everything so I decided my children would not be in any danger by Matt having guns. I imagined the helplessness of us if some lunatic literally did break in and try to hurt us. Our chances of survival would be much higher if Matt and I were armed along with our intruder as opposed to unarmed against an armed intruder. Then a thought occurred to me.
“I have never shot a pistol, only a rifle,” I told Matt.
“A rifle would be a very bad way to try to shoot someone in a small room in a house,” Matt said, “I’ll teach you.”
So earlier, before Matt went off to purchase his firearm, he said, “what kind of gun do you think you could shoot best?”
“I can shoot anything you give me if you’ll teach me,” I said. He said he liked that answer. Matt has been very well and thoroughly trained on how to use all kinds of firearms. I have not. I’ve been informally taught by cops and a step-dad and other random people so I am going to look into getting someone at a gun range to make me into a warrior like Matt. I think it’s a really bad idea to have a firearm that I have no clue how to operate when it’s the tool I’ll use to destroy a psycho if they try to break into my house and steal my kids. I wondered if I really would have an issue shooting someone if I just totally had to. I feel bad just hurting someone feelings and the thought of someone’s life being over because of me is just insane. But I really thought about it and envisioned the pain and suffering my kids would go through if some psycho got a hold of them and decided I would be 100% willing to end some pedophile’s life if he tried to harm one of my kids. So I’ve got to figure out how to operate this thing. My grandpa and uncle have some really intimidating looking pistols and they make me kind of nervous. So I’ve got to figure out how to operate and dominate this thing in the event that I have to use it to protect my family. The end.
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