I opened my eyes and squinted – the hall light was on. Just then I saw my husband start down our stairs. I could tell by his speed that this was not a normal workday.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, blinking, trying to get my eyes fully open.
There was no answer.
I looked at the clock. It was 4:30 AM — an hour before our usual wake up time.
Sitting up, I called again, “Is something wrong? Where are you going?”
Still no answer.
Hurrying to the door I looked down into the darkness of the stairwell. “Hey, are you down there? What happened? Is something wrong?”
Just then, he walked around the corner and into the light, “I thought there was,” he said, starting up the stairs. “The wet-vac was on.”
“What do you mean it was on?
“I don’t know. It was just on.”
We have been working on our dining room remodel and the wet-vac is what he uses to clean up remodel debris. “I still had it plugged in from the last time I used it. That’s the socket that matches the light switch we’ve had trouble with so maybe it has a short or something and it just came on. I didn’t know at first what the sound was. I thought it might be a water pipe or something. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“No problem, but that’s just weird,” I said crawling back in bed. (Then I couldn’t help myself.) “Well, it is Halloween.” I giggled.
That made us both laugh.
“At least I’m not the one who heard it first,” I continued. “I would have been waking you up whispering, ‘Get up, there is somebody downstairs…”
“…and they are running the wet-vac,” he finished with a grin, “because they’d have to CLEAN our house before they could rob it!”
That cracked us up. The poor burglar, he would fall over all my stuff before he could ever find anything to steal.
At that point I knew was laughing to much to sleep again so I turned on the TV to watch a little early morning QVC. Nothing like a bit of retail therapy to calm a fast-beating heart.
