A knock in the night…

I’m a little out of sorts this morning… had quite a night. Let me start from the beginning…

I went to bed a little later than usual for a Sunday night, a little after 11pm. I fell asleep relatively well as I had not (thank goodness) taken a nap yesterday afternoon/evening. (Unlike Saturday night, when I woke up from my “nap” at 6:30pm. And then was up until about 2am. Oops.)

Shortly after 1AM, I was startled… er, more like scared to the brink of a heart attack… by someone pounding on my bedroom window. Not once. TWICE. And the second time is what sent my mind reeling. It was louder. More determined. Then it stopped and I heard the sound of crunching snow. Walking.

For the next while, I laid in bed wishing I had a roommate, a boyfriend, a spouse. Or anyone that I could call. Someone to talk some re-assuring sense into me. Because I was coming up with every conceivable notion of what would or could happen.

And without having anything REALLY happen (outside of losing a few hours of sleep), I still feel like my safety has been compromised. I feel like I am at risk. A single girl living alone on the first floor… not to mention that the cell phone was on the other side of the bedroom charging.

I did end up calling the police a while later… but by then who ever it was had left or walked somewhere else. The very nice officer called when he arrived and assured me that no one was around the building any longer but to make sure to call right away the next time. (Note: I wasn’t exactly coherant at 1 in the morning to call… it was only after messages from friends saying that I should do that when it really occurred to me. I’m telling ya… I would be great the hour after an emergency.)

The police officer did ask if I had anyone that would come only to my window – deliberately to MY window – you can see the tracks in the snow… and I honestly can’t think of anyone. Or a reason why anyone would want to do that to me. I try my best to live an upstanding life… many of my friends (and some family) know the complex that I live in, but don’t know what building. I have a feeling the same goes for the crazy person that came a wandering today. We have security entrances… why he/they didn’t just buzz the person they were looking for is beyond me. Unless it was for something illegal. Which I don’t even want to think about. Well… not think about any more than I already have.

I laid awake between my living room and bedroom, jumping at every tiny noise (and the television in my bedroom makes a lot of “creaking/cracking” noises in the night), until about 5am when I finally fell back to sleep. Fast forward to my alarm going off at 6:45am (yeah, I moved my alarm back from it’s original 6:00am wake up call) and me hitting “snooze”. Except that I didn’t hit “snooze”. I turned my alarm off. Yeah, I’m that smooth on a total of 3 hours of sleep. So I ended up sleeping until 8am and being a 1/2 hour late for work. Good times.

At least my boss understood (as I am still pretty shook up about this) as I recounted the story of the night to him. That’s a good thing for working at a small company I guess. There really aren’t a lot of perks right now (mainly due to the economy), but that’s one of them. Understanding. And I’m very thankful for that.

Today we have our company “Christmas Lunch”… and I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about it. I’m not sure what they are doing as far as gifts… but over the years this firm has been very generous to me.

I’m sorry if this post doesn’t make sense on the 4 hours of sleep I got. It is what it is.

And for those of you waiting for the creative writing swap, it should be posted later today. I really can’t wait for all of you to read my poem/story/adaptation of “The Night before Christmas.”

Flick photo credit: yuan2003 @ flickr