March 28, 2006

Hammer Time

My neighbor learned just how weird I was last year when she was helping me hang pictures on the walls. Instead of going to the basement to retrieve my hammer, I went right to my bedroom. My hammer was located beside my bed, propped against my nightstand with the handle end up. Hanging pictures in my room and felt too lazy to take the hammer back downstairs to be with its tool friends? No, the hammer was placed there strategically, much in the same way that a police officer places a gun in his/her holster.

The hammer wasn’t missing its tool friends either. Some random plumbing tool was keeping it company along with the wrapping paper under my bed. Its purpose? Well, my action-plan-demented-brain figured that any person who would break in my house in the middle of the night would go to the master bedroom. That’s where the goods are right? Potential items of interest for bad person: Adult who might try to stop robbery, potential jewelry and other valuables, money (which let me just save you some time as in, not, because I have about 30 cents in my possession at any given time.) Don’t believe me? Ask my mom who is constantly buying me lunch when we go out and always getting the tip too. Want a couple pennies to throw in the fountain? Sure, got that, but anything beyond that is pretty much not happening.

Anyway, back to the action plan. . . I’m sleeping, someone comes into my bedroom. I hear them and casually drop my arm down the side of my bed. . . and in one broad swooping swing, I no longer have a problem. Bad person. . . does.

This action plan was formulated courtesy of the job that kept my husband traveling an insane amount of the time. He was gone so often that I would occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, convinced there was someone breaking in, go retrieve my sleeping daughter from her bed, place her in my bed, and lock the bedroom door behind us. I may or may not have pushed furniture in front of that door. I know. It’s a little crazy, but I needed to sleep. Without the action plan process already in motion there would be no sleep.

So, my neighbor got a laugh from my strategic tool placement; and I got a good nights sleep. The hammer made that possible. I love hammers, which is why when my neighbor emailed me the link to this story, about a girl who used a hammer to fight off her kidnapper, I knew it was a girl after my own heart.

http://www.nbc17.com/news/8186167/detail.html Is she amazing or what?

The arsenal of basement tools has since been returned to the basement; but the bedside protection still remains in the form of wooden nunchaku. Oh, and an alarm system that I insisted on having installed since my attack cats are always on the fritz.