Scaredy Cat

Recently I began wondering for how much longer I will remain afraid of an empty house.

When I was younger and someone would ring my home door bell, I used to wonder why mum would freak out and shriek "DON'T ANSWER IT! DO YOU KNOW WHO IT IS? ASK WHO IT IS FIRST!" Since I've always been humiliated by the idea of yelling back and forth through a door, I would ignore her and answer.

But now I get it. I have been very lucky to never have had my apartment door bell rung. And if I ever do, that person will be out of luck; I don't even dare peak, that's how certain I am that the bell ringer is coming to do horrible things to me.

Like I've said before, I'm 27. That's pretty adult. Yet, when I go to the basement and try to find my way into the dark laundry room, I am absolutely convinced someone is in there waiting for me. When I'm finally in there, I am absolutely convinced someone followed me in. And while I'm fighting off those fears, God forbid I hear a creak upstairs. Because obviously that means someone snuck into my house and is waiting for me to crawl back up those stairs so they can murder me. What's the solution? Doing laundry when the boyfriend is home. What happens when the boyfriend is away for a month straight? Lots of perfume and the underwear with holes in them. They're not old, just cheap. I have Daisy Fuentes' Kohls collection to thank for that.

I also try really hard not to have to pee when I'm alone in my apartment. I have never once went into the bathroom feeling confident that there was no one behind the shower curtain. On the extra scary days, I check. On the lazier days, I pray. I feel like I might need a plan for the days that I check. If I ever pull that curtain back to find someone staring back at me, that will be a very unfortunate situation for me as I have no plan.

Anyone who looks out through a dark window at night for more than half a second is a courageous, fearless hero as far as I'm concerned.

Right now there is a weird cop that's been sitting on his bike outside of my apartment for more than 3 hours. I'm convinced he'll be breaking in here tonight. Or tomorrow night, since I was just informed I'll be spending the night here alone.

Which brings me to another awful situation: sleeping in a house or apartment by myself. I just can't think of anything worse. There is no sound, creek, stillness, or movement of air that I can ignore. I do have a move though: whether I'm doing the dishes, peeing, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, or laying in bed - if i hear anything out of the ordinary, I freeze. I freeze as is or I hit the deck. And I stay frozen for several minutes - maybe even ten- until I am absolutely 100% positive that it's probably nothing. And I hope that will always be the case, because the statue move will never save my life.

So I'm really praying for several things here: no visitors, no hidden bathtub guests, and a roommate who never, ever, ever leaves me alone in the house overnight.

Normal?

Kisses of Death

Let me preface this by saying I've been less than successful with my new diet.

The other day at lunchtime, I left work to buy something quick for lunch at CVS. I walked in with the intention of buying a lean cuisine pizza, and left the store with a lean cuisine and a bag of cordial cherry hershey kisses.

Huge mistake.

I ate my lunch, then started in on the bag of kisses. Fully aware that this situation could quickly become out of control, I started giving a few away here and there. I still continued to eat enough to make me nauseous, I'd say almost half the bag. At one point, I looked into my trash and saw just a million crumpled up hershey wrappers. For fear that one of my cube members might come by and see, I threw some large pieces of paper into the trash and rearranged everything so that the wrappers weren't as visible. Come 5:00, I had gotten away with eating 20 hershey kisses without anyone noticing and it was time to go home.

Day 2.

Around 11:00am, I remembered the rest of the hershey kisses were in my drawer and abandoned my diet once again. By 3:00, I had eaten about 12 hershey kisses (maybe more), again feeling nauseous. A co-worker who knew I had hershey kisses came by to ask for some more. Relieved, I told him to take a lot. "There's only 2 in here" he said. "What?? Wow that's nuts, they've been going fast."

It was then that he decided to eat it while standing at my cube. He went to throw out the wrapper in my trash, and then froze - his eyes glued to the inside of the trash bag.

There have been very few times in my life when the level of humiliation I felt was actually equal to the level of humiliation another person felt for me. This was one of them. So I laughed too loud and muttered a few words awkwardly about eating a lot that day. He sensed my embarrassment, laughed, and left me alone in my own puddle of shame.

So, yes, this was one of the more embarrassing things that's happened to me in later years. But instead of dwelling on it, I'll walk away having learned a very valuable lesson.

Wrappers belong in my purse.

The Last Cake

Holidays are over. Vacation is booked for March. Diet starts today.

That said, I ate everything in sight this weekend, and made use of one of my best gifts knowing it would be my last chance.

Mini-cake set, I'll see you in April.