I promised to tell this story, so here it is.
After having gone to bed at some unreasonable hour the night before, the alarms go off at 5 am. 2 of them: one in the parents’ bedroom, one in the tweenager’s room, where the Tasmanian devil decided to sleep as well. 2 alarms, 4 people, only I get up. Alright fine.
“Babe, wake up.”
“Make me.”
“Get the hayell, up! Don’t make me go grab the water.” (He loathes being sprayed with water. I sometimes wonder how closely he is related to cats.)
“No.”
Now at this point I figure he is just messing with me, because he does like to see how angry I can get. Because he is coherent enough to argue with me, I figure he is going to get up. On to the girls.
“Tweenager!”
“Yes Mommy”
“Time to get up baby.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Alright everyone has been told to get up. I go get McFurrybutt out of the cage and outside. I give her some water, some food. I get the day’s wardrobe together. I have not heard one foot hit the floor yet. I do not want to go back up the stairs, so I pick up the phone instead.
“Hello”
“Get out of bed, we need to go, I don’t want to be late.”
“Yes ma’am”
My other half does not ever have his phone where he can conveniently reach it. And if by some miracle he did, he would not answer it anyway.
I go on about my business, picked out clothes for Taz, got dressed, used the bathroom. Packed my lunch. 15 minutes later, still no footsteps. Now I am furious mainly because I am going to have to climb the stairs again. I am stomping around the kitchen doing my best impression of Mrs. Cosby: (muttering) “These people want to drive me crazy, why can’t they just get up on time, now I gotta go BACK up them stairs and…” (record scratch) Hold up!!! Oh no I don’t have to go upstairs!!!!
Let me interject a mini story here, just for background:
A few years ago, I lived in this same house with 6 other people. I did all the cooking. They preferred my cooking to theirs, I was happy to oblige. This is a 3 level home, and have I mentioned how I hate stairs? If I didn’t notify every one that dinner was done, someone would pout and say they didn’t get enough food. But I was not going up and down stairs. And then my housemate found a solution for me. Have you ever heard a ship’s bell? The one that rings the hour so the crewmen know it’s time to change shift? Yeah, one of those.
Mind you, I had only rung this bell during the evening when the house had plenty of other noises to compete with it – TV, radios, conversations, etc.
This morning, there was none of that. Even McFurrybutt had forgone her normal “I’m pissed you put me in here” bark. It was dead silent. I carefully picked up the bell, making sure to hold my hand around the clapper. Stood at the bottom of the stairs and then:
“clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang clangclangclang
I need everyone to the get the FUCK out of bed RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!!!!!”
THUD
THUD
THUD
Three people fell out of bed almost simultaneously.
“Yes Ma’am!”
That night, all three of them were pissed at me. I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard.
Chaotically Controlled 