Let's be clear, I am a game little filly - and I'm not just talking about sex. Sunday morning when my son had t-ball practice and the other mom's were sitting around gossiping I grabbed my glove and helped out with the kids.
When I had my fourth c-section and the baby had to go into the NICU - on the other side of the hospital and up two floors - and my husband had to leave to take care of our other children I pushed my own wheelchair back and forth from my room to the NICU every two hours to nurse her.
Last summer when our front lawn was LUSH, GREEN, CRABGRASS and my husband said we needed to tear it up and spread loam and reseed, I said, "NO FUCKING WAY. I am NOT spending time KILLING MYSELF doing that. I DO NOT CARE about the lawn."
And so this Saturday when I looked out at my front lawn and saw my husband tilling up the grass weeds and heard him ordering TEN YARDS of loam, instead of DIVORCING him, LIKE I SHOULD HAVE DONE, I grabbed a rake and pitched in. And the following day, when the 10 yards of loam showed up I grabbed a shovel and helped spread it ALL FUCKING DAY.
And when my neighbor drove by and commented from his new convertible, "You have started a project which you have NO CHOICE but to finish, I DIDN'T even fill his FUCKING CAR with DIRT."
I am THAT AWESOME.
But that's not really what this story is about.
My husband, we'll call him OTTO, has a gun. You know, one gun or maybe a small munitions depot in my walk-in closet, who's counting.
I'm just saying, when ATF shows up, you CANNOT be too careful.
Anyway, one night we're lying in bed with a handgun tucked under the mattress on his side of the bed, pointed straight at me. (We'll discuss the subliminal message in this in a later post.) I'm 90% of the way asleep when he asks me, "Did you hear that?"
"No." I say, suddenly wide awake. We lie there for a minute quietly. I drift off.
"Did you hear that?" he asks again.
"No," I say, awake again. He gets up. He walks around upstairs, looks downstairs and comes back to bed. I look at him, he shrugs. I roll over.
30 seconds later an ENORMOUS MAN comes CRASHING THROUGH the door of my bedroom SCREAMING and CARRYING A GUN.
I jump up, TERRIFIED. The man laughs. The MAN is my sheepish husband. "It's a bat." he says.
I had fallen asleep and he had gotten up again. What I thought was 30 seconds was actually more like 20 minutes. While he was standing at the top of the stairs a bat had whizzed by his head, scaring the CRAP out of him and causing him to SCREECH LIKE A GIRL and jump backwards into our room where he looked, to me, like an armed intruder. He's lucky I didn't have a FUCKING gun.
Anyway, we still had the BAT to contend with. Otto put the gun down and looked out into the hall. Suddenly he screamed like a girl. Now let me tell you, my husband is 6'4" tall, about 250 lbs, and barrel chested with great big shoulders but he can shriek like an old lady.
So there I am, sitting in bed, and there he is shrieking. The bat flies into our room and starts circling. I had a friend in High School who used to let her parrot out to do the same thing whenever I came over - I am TERRIFIED of things that fly. They're so UNPREDICTABLE.
My husband yells, "GET A TOWEL." so being the game little filly I am (remember that), I crawl out of bed and commando crawl across the room to the walk-in closet where I stand up and grab a towel. Just then the bat turns and DIVE-BOMBS me in the closet. I SCREAM, throw the towel, DROP to my belly and commando crawl back to my bed (faster) where I jump back into the bed, pull the covers up over my hair before the bat can ENTANGLE himself in it and HIDE. Screw being a game little filly, there is NO way I am coming out.
*FWAP* the noise rings out. "I got him" my husband yells. I peek out. No bat.
I sit up and look. The towel is on the floor and there is a tick-tick-tick-tick noise coming from it. My husband had knocked him out of the sky - all of those boyhood locker room towel fights coming to good use. He walks over and goes to pick up the bat. He picks up a corner of the towel and THERE is the BAT! He resumes dive bombing me and circling the room.
I resume hiding under the covers. My husband keeps trying to FWAP him out of the sky. At some point I'm screaming and laughing so hard that I have to go to the bathroom or risk wetting my bed. "He went into the hall." my husband calls as the bat flies out. No sooner am I halfway to the bathroom than the bat comes back. I hurl my body into a tumble roll into the bathroom like Jason Bourne and slam the door behind me.
*FWAP* I hear again. "Got him." My husband calls.
This time I wait for him to bring the bat outside and free him before coming out of hiding.
There was no sex after that. Did you really think there would be?
SWAT teams... ATF... guns in the bedroom.
You sure you don't live on a strange religious commune (where sex is so good I'm thinking of joining) somewhere?
Posted by: Bee | May 04, 2010 at 08:05 AM
Oh dear, I have to stop twitterstalking you... I keep getting here first
Posted by: Bee | May 04, 2010 at 08:06 AM
Awwww,the poor bat. it was probably scared out of its mind!
if a bat ever got into my house, i would probably try and make it my pet. i'm weird like that.
Posted by: Shaina | May 04, 2010 at 08:07 AM
Best. Story. Ever!! Cannot stop laughing!!
Posted by: Kim | May 04, 2010 at 08:29 AM
Your stories kill me! hahaha I would have been hiding under the covers the entire time! Forget being brave and being a team player!
And your husband continues to amuse me! lol
Posted by: Diane | May 04, 2010 at 08:36 AM
LOL...I truly love reading your blog..
Posted by: Deanna Hernandez-Arza | May 04, 2010 at 08:44 AM
Bwahhh haaa haaa!!!
Wait... not even a little *spooning* afterward? I'm also waiting to hear HOW the HELL a BAT GOT INSIDE the house in the first place?!??
Posted by: kristen | May 04, 2010 at 09:34 AM
I just died laughing. Dead. Completely deceased.
Posted by: Brittany | May 04, 2010 at 09:38 AM
OH MY GOSH! How scary!I am pretty sure we would have had to call a professional to come handle the problem. Like Billy the Exterminator - have you seen that show? I would totally have called him.
You are a very gifted storyteller my friend. You make me laugh so hard that I think I am going to pee my pants!Thanks for the daily laughs!
Posted by: Jenny Keller | May 04, 2010 at 10:05 AM
You cannot make shit like this up. Freaking hysterical. Strangely, the part that made me laugh hardest was the thought of your big burly husband shrieking like an old lady. See? That has me in giggles yet again.
Posted by: Suz | May 04, 2010 at 10:16 AM
Good times! I grew up in the country, lots of bats and critters in our house. Bats are actually kinda cute. They have an amazing sense of direction, they will come close but won't ever actually hit you. I've done some bat studies, I have a soft spot for them.
Posted by: Kristin | May 04, 2010 at 11:36 AM
OH MY GOD!! FWAP!!! that was too fucking funny! i know who not to call if there is ever a bat in the house.. YOU!!!! LOL
Posted by: Bree | May 04, 2010 at 12:47 PM
Game little filly ... Your blog is the talk of the town and your identity has been leaked, but only to the animal kingdom. The bat was on a stealth mission to really find out the kinky shit that goes on inside your bedroom and sadly you were just sleeping. On the plus side I do hear there is a rumored twitpic of your Ladyparts.
Posted by: Poppy Marler | May 04, 2010 at 12:52 PM
We had bat in bedroom drama, too.
http://rubysu87.blogspot.com/2007/08/bat-in-box-fan-and-other-stories.html
Thank god Mark doesn't arm himself with anything scarier than a homemade baseball bat!
Wait. That *is* pretty scary...
Posted by: CDG | May 04, 2010 at 01:30 PM
OMG. I was laughing.
Posted by: MommyLisa | May 04, 2010 at 03:17 PM
OMG, that's good stuff right there. Thanks for the laugh.
Posted by: Alicia aka MyBusyMind | May 04, 2010 at 03:28 PM
Sorry you had to go through that, but your story had me laughing from start to finish! I hate bats. They creep me out. When I worked with horses we had a hayloft full of the bastards. *shudder*
Posted by: buzzvibe | May 04, 2010 at 08:09 PM
I laughed. And then, because I have had too much wine, I cried. But it was funny crying.
It reminds me of the time I tried to go to the bathroom and lifted the lid and there was a tree frog in the bowl.
A mean, vicious, killer tree frog.
And I cursed loudly. And DH screamed like a girl and ran away. But he doesn't have a gun because he's not really handy that way and would probably shoot himself in the naughty bits.
And then I ran outside and found my neighbor and made him come take care of it.
And he caught it in a plastic shopping bag like Mr. Miyagi and took it outside, and then I couldn't use that toilet bowl ever again.
The end.
Posted by: Jennifer @ three pugs & a baby | May 04, 2010 at 09:03 PM
LOL! That is so hilarious. A friend of our family had a bat fly into her vent once and get hurt. What else could we do but take it in and care for it until it got better? Definitely the weirdest temporary pet we every had (I'm pretty sure). In case you were wondering, they're suuuper soft.
Posted by: Skywaitress | May 04, 2010 at 10:19 PM
That is freakin hilarious, and wow! that brings back memories.
I was awakened in the middle of the night (bedroom in basement next to the rec room) to find a bat had flown down the chimney to the basement and was flying around the light fixture. Jammies-clad kid runs upstairs: "Dad! There's a bat in the basement!" "Mmmph. Grab the fishing net and a record album, catch it in the net, slip the album cover under to trap it, and let it loose outside. Zzzzzz".
I almost had a heart attack at 13 when it slipped through the wide-weave net and went back to flying around the ceiling. Later I caught my breath, and caught IT in the fine-weave net and took it outside. To see the poor little thing laying there stunned on the edge of the ditch where I dumped it, with its little chest heaving ferociously and too afraid to move almost brought me to tears. It was gone a few minutes later when I went back to check on it. I assume it wasn't eaten by anything.
To this day I can't help but smile when I chance to see a bat fly past in the night.
Posted by: NermalTheHun | May 04, 2010 at 11:57 PM
exciting!! maybe that bat likes the women that goes commando in bed.
Posted by: mahmeeee | May 05, 2010 at 12:25 AM
omg You have me dying over here! So freakin' funny.
Posted by: Tricia | May 05, 2010 at 12:41 AM
My ex used to sleep with a gun under the mattress too. That in no way actually relates to the mouse incident I was going to relate which includes my mother, my sister and myself in the farmhouse I was renting with mice running around the room and my sister and mother standing on the dining room table shrieking at the top of their lungs.
But I changed my mind about telling you because it would take too long, suffice to say I would never survive if I had to live off mice and thank the universe my dining table was sturdy.
And also, thanks for making me paranoid about bats. Every noise I hear now, I'll be thinking "is that a bat?". And I live on my own WITHOUT WEAPONS.
Posted by: Sally Megan | May 05, 2010 at 01:44 AM
When my husband and I were dating, I was at his place and we were having relations and a bat came FLYING IN THROUGH THE FUCKING WINDOW. At the time, I had butt length thick curly hair. I didn't even TRY to do anything but hide under the covers.
My husband and one of his housemates got tennis rackets and knocked that fucker down. So I'm told. I didn't come out until the coast was clear.
If I recall correctly, we may have resumed relations. We were younger then. And had more energy.
Posted by: Suniverse | May 05, 2010 at 07:10 PM
It took me way too long to realize that you meant an animal.
Posted by: Hannah | July 28, 2011 at 12:12 AM