Freaky Friday!

I'm not easily freaked out. Spiders usually give me the willies, but not so bad that I'm written off as truly arachnophobic. I don't scare easily. Shoot, I'm an Army wife, I'd better have nerves of steel, ya know? But occasionally....well, something breaks through this armor shell of mine.

I had one of those experiences last night and this morning.

Just as Pete and I finally settled into bed and shut out the world, and just as I was slowly drifting off to sleep, an odd sound permeated the silence. An eerie little voice...but where was it coming from? Outside? No, certainly no one had a toddler out at that hour! Maybe it was just my imagination, I thought. I asked Pete if he heard it, and he didn't. I settled back in to my little silent world, and there it was again just a few minutes later....what on earth???? "Pete, did you hear that?" Snort, shuffle, shuffle, sniff...."yeah, I guess so. Tell the girls to go back to sleep."

I checked on the girls. They WERE asleep, all three of them. It wasn't Jon and Kelsey, they were holed up in Jon's room doing today's algebra assignment (yes, algebra at 1am, is that a problem?), and besides, their voices were deeper than what I had heard. Surely it was my imagination. Go back to bed, already!

Ten minutes later, I heard it again......"heeeheee, wooooooOOOOOOoooooah."

Okay, this is getting creepy. Wait, what was that? "Elmo needs a streeeeetch!" You gotta be kidding me, ELMO??? Who is playing with Elmo at this hour? Maybe one of the girls is laying on him. I walked into the girls' room to seek out that annoying little Muppet, and found him laying ON TOP of the toybox, with nothing triggering any of his little speech buttons. And as I reached for him, he uttered one more shrill little "woooooooOOOOOOooooooah" before I even had a single finger on him, and I quickly snatched him up, dragged him to the living room and tossed him in the darkest, coldest corner I could find! Eek, what a creepy little toy!

If that weren't enough to keep my heart racing, I had to wake up at 6:30 this morning to Jamie's little face, eye-to-eye with mine, standing at the edge of my bed just STARING at me with the creepiest "Children of the Corn" look I've ever seen. She didn't say anything, just stared. I knew screaming would NOT be the proper response...but you know that scene in every scary movie where you just *know* something awful is going to happen? This was one of those scenes.

I think Jamie may have a future in horror movies, co-starred by Elmo. Eek.