Monday, January 3, 2011

How the Handelands Rang in the New Year

I used to work for a fella who fancied himself a good whistler. That's debatable, and not at all of any importance to this story.  When I first started working for him, I thought that he was a kinda, well you know "melba toast."  Dorky, finance smarts, farm kid. He had his wedding picture on the ledge of his window and it completely baffled me how this guy snagged such a hot wife. It took six months, but finally The Whistler started cracking jokes, and then it all made sense. He was funny.

One cold winter day, as I was loitering in The Whistler's office, I brought up the topic of cold weather. It was most likely a means to get sent home early. I don't remember if it worked or not, but what I do remember was one thing he said. "The cold keeps the riff raff out."  I didn't give that comment too much thought, until we moved to Florida. You don't see gators in the water there? Riff Raff = Gators. Which totally makes sense right?

But then, because I have plenty of time on my hands to let thoughts whirl around in my head, I thought of some college class I took. The lesson was about the difference between Correlated and Related. The professor used the example of how an increase in ice cream sales correlated to an increase in burglaries. They were not related to each other, but to a separate cause (being an increase in temperature.).  So after these thoughts were swirling in my head, of course I was thinking about ice cream.

Next thing you know, I am eating ice cream and watching the news. They are televising the news about a gruesome home invasion. Now I've got a different vision of Riff Raff in my head. And I am eating ice cream, therefore there will be an increase in burglaries. We're bound to be next. AHHHH. I had words with My Chef and our security system was activated by the end of the week. (I should add that it didn't help that and ADT man came to our door to sell security systems and used scare tactics. They worked, but My Chef was so peeved with their tactics, that we went with another company- ah ha! take that.)

Our system has been working great since, and I sleep well knowing the growling, thumping, snorting sounds outside my door are actually the sounds of my babies peacefully sleeping. I also like that it chimes when the doors open so if I don't see little Bear Cub sneak out the back door, a little chime sounds so I know she's headed to the pond to hunt gators.

The night of New Year's Eve was nothing spectacular. We were excited to hear that Disney was going to set off two fireworks displays. One at 8:30pm, and one at 11:30pm. Perfect. We could watch the early show from our upstairs bathroom window, do a pretend countdown and call it a year. My Chef buttoned up the house and headed to our cheap seats while I stayed downstairs to fix a little snack for the show.

I was just about the pick up our snacks when a noise started that can only be compared to prison siren's during a riot. It took two seconds to realize it was our security alarm. 62 thoughts went through my head, one of which was that the burglar must have thought the fireworks would be good cover for breaking in. I dropped my snacks and bolted up the stairs to protect/calm my babies. My feet hit three of the 18 steps. My Chef is at the top yelling at me "Is someone down there?"  over and over. How else would the alarm be going off? So I tell him "YES!"  To which he bellows "GET OUT NOW!!" in a voice I've never heard before.

He asks me again if someone is down there or if I set it off. No! We listen and only hear the shrieks of the alarm. Then it hits him. He set it off when he opened the bathroom window to see the fireworks. It was my second near heart attack of the week. (I nearly had one during a spin cycle class a few days earlier.)  We calmed ourselves and started laughing at our defense plan. Run and Yell. Run and Yell. And then we sat in wonderment at how our two little one's didn't even make a peep through the whole ordeal.

In the end we didn't even end up watching the fireworks. We just checked our blood pressure, did a fake countdown, kissed and called it a night. And that's how the Handelands rang in New Years.

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