Strange Happenings

Every time I leave my house something strange happens. The problem with this is not that something strange has happened, but that no one is awake to explain to me what exactly is going on when I get home. Generally speaking, I am a night owl. Add to this that I work about 4 nights a week, and don’t get home from said job until after midnight. All around, I see my family for a few hours in the middle of the day after I emerge from my room in the afternoon and before I set out for the night. They also all seem to not know how to use their phones to communicate. So I’m left in the dark when I get home at 12:06 am.

Two nights ago I had no idea anything was wrong. I left in the early afternoon to go to a ball game with some friends, and didn’t return until close to 1 am. Nothing seemed out of sorts. Both cars were at my sister’s barn, so I assumed that she and her husband were home. All of the cars at the main house were there, and the porch light was on, as it is when I’m out late. Nothing seemed out of sorts. My mother always hears me come in, as her bedroom is right next to the front door. I sneak in as quietly as I might, but she always hears me come in. Or at least that’s what she claims. I stayed up until 3 am goofing around on the computer, and then turned over for sleep that I figured would last until at least noon.

9:30 am my parents come in to my room with the phone. Both of them. They tell me PNC Bank is on the phone with some questions about some suspicious activity on my account. I take the phone and listen to the woman list off 3 transactions that happen the same day, and I verify that all of those were, in fact, of my own doing. I appreciate their alert attention on my account, but is it really that far fetched that I would buy candy at the beach in the morning, pay ETS for the PRAXIS I test in the afternoon, and buy gas in a town an hour away from the beach much later that night? I guess most of their customers are nowhere near as mobile as I am.

Once I’ve verified my ability to be in more than one place within a 24 hour period, I hang up and hand the phone back to my mother. My mother then sits on my bed and says, “honey, we didn’t want you to find out on facebook, so we wanted to tell you now.” I am one of those lucky 20-somethings who is friends with her parents on facebook. I find out things through my mother’s status updates. One night, while I was on my computer in my room, which is just off of the living room, I received a wall post from my mother, who was in the office, which is just off of the kitchen, which is right next to the living room. The post said, “Hey Lauren! Dinner is ready and we’re having barbaque (sic) spareribs, homemade mashed potatoes and cheezy (sic) mixed veggies and we’re sitting on the couch to eat!” I’m not making that up. So my mother’s concern that I would find something out on facebook is, in fact, a valid one.

“Your sister was admitted to the hospital last night around 8:30.” My sister, by the way, is 6 months pregnant.

“What?” I was still half asleep, and now I was also confused. I was confused about my sister being in the hospital, but more importantly, how no one decided to call and tell me. Certainly there was nothing I could do, but now I felt guilty for hanging out with my friends and then so peacefully sleeping when my sister and my unborn niece were in the hospital. How could I be so selfish? How could I not tell something was wrong? Where is my ability to subconsciously sense when something was amiss with someone in my family? What is wrong with me?

“It was a severe urinary tract infection. She’s okay. So is the baby. As soon as she can keep down food she can come home. I’m going to go sit with her right now.” Should I go with her? I felt guilty that I wasted all that time when I didn’t know she was in the hospital not caring that she was in the hospital. Maybe if I sacrificed sleep and sat at the hospital with her until she stopped puking I’d redeem myself for being so ignorant of such a medium level family emergency.

“Okay. I’ll be here,” I said. I’d remembered that it was my parents’ decision to not tell me that my sister was in the ER, not my decision to not worry about her, and thus felt it would be okay if I kept sleeping. Plus, I really like sleep much more than I like watching my sister puke. When I woke up later my dad told me that my sister had been released and was on her way home. She was doing so well, in fact, that she went to the state fair later that afternoon.

I wish I could tell you that that isn’t a running theme in my family, that my family told me things, or contacted me to give me a heads up about things. But they don’t.

Last night I got home from work just after midnight. I head through the living room when I notice a semi-tall cage next to the bathroom door. The only thing in the cage is a small pile of blankets in the bottom left corner. Now, my household is mostly comprised of furry, two- and four-legged creatures. Cats, dogs, goats, chickens, ducks, ferrets, a rabbit. We have a lot of pets. My mother is Dr. Doolittle. For reals. The problem, though, is that I seem to have developed an allergy to the ferrets. Plus they stink. And I’ve been trying to convince her to find them a new home for several months. Now I come home to find a new cage with a mystery animal. Because we need more animals.

At first I ignored the cage. If I pretended it wasn’t there then it wasn’t there. But I had to go to the bathroom. So I went to the bathroom. Before I got to the bathroom, though, I was met with a horrific sound. I can’t even describe it other than to say it sounded like something small and mean that could bite me and give me rabies. I jumped back, muttered some profanities, and then found myself stuck. I had to go to the bathroom, but every time I moved, something from under the blankets in the cage told me to stop moving. And it didn’t matter that that thing was behind bars. I was still scared.

Eventually I was able to take a wide enough path around the cage to appease the mystery creature. I noticed a box of stuff on the dining room table, and moved closer to inspect it. It was food. And the bag was labeled “Sugar Glider Feed”. A clue. I went back to my room and got onto my computer. My mother’s facebook status said, “sugar bear!!!!” Another clue. Now, lucky for me I’ve seen enough police procedurals. I googled “sugar bear” so I could see what this little hissing thing looked like. Damnit. They’re cute. I heard noise out in the living room, and snuck out to see what was going on. The sugar bear had come out of hiding. Again, damnit. It was cute. And it was curious about me. So we stared at each other through the bars for a while, him deciding whether or not I was safe, and me deciding whether or not I’d accept his existence.

I told my parents this story when I got up, and they laughed. My mom said she even thought about contacting me and letting me know. Those bastards think its funny. They know how to use their phones, they just know the amusement they’ll get out of the results when they don’t contact me.