Things that go bump in the night - reposted

In honor of Halloween and the stupid (but, I still need to keep it around since the kids like it so much) hand basket thing we have in our foyer for the Halloween candies, I want to repost my "Things that go bump in the night" post. 

the dogs even hate the stupid hand thing

Things that go bump in the night are always more scary when Steve is not home.

11pm: I am laying in bed alone.  My boyfriend just left.  I kid, I kid.  The kids are asleep and the dogs are...somewhere in the house.  The tv is on some lovely trashy Bravo programming...my guilty pleasure!

I start to hear this humming/rotating sound, sort of like a leaf blower outside.  Hmmmm....

I ignore the noise at first, and then the longer it lasted the more concerned I got.  What could it be?  The neighbor kid has been known to do yard work in the dark, but 11pm is a little excessive.  I open the bedroom window, which faces the front of our house...nothing really. I sort of hear the sound, but not really.

Hmmmmm....

This noise will not go away and the more I think about it the more concerned I get.  What if the house is going to blow up?

I check in the kids rooms.  Nothing.  Kids are so cute when they are sleeping, aren't they?

I can hear the noise from my bathroom, which only has a skylight, no windows, so I think it could be outside road noise.  I know they are working on a highway within an earshot from our house.  I get back into bed.  I get on the highway website to check road construction, and yes they confirm a project.  However, they don't give an exact timing of any phases of the project.  Ok, that makes my mind rest...a bit.


Wait! Maybe it is the dehumidifier in the basement.  Sometimes the hose becomes loose and it rattles a bit.  So, I get out of the comfort of my bedroom and make my way downstairs.  I am sure to turn on all the lights on my trek.  Our neighborhood gets really dark at night, and sometimes even I get a little spooked.  I open the basement door.  I hear the dehumidifier, but that isn't the noise I am trying to identify.

I walk around the first floor and go into every room.  Finally, I turn on the outside light to our back porch.  The light does a decent job of lighting the absolute blackness of our backyard.  Of course I need to make sure there are no boogie-men waiting outside for their prime opportunity to abduct me.  I open the door.  BINGO!  Confirmed!  I find the source of the noise.  With the way the house faces, and the way the winds are, the road construction noise is more prominent in the back of our house.  Therefore, I couldn't really hear it from the front when I first opened the bedroom window.

I make my way back to bed, triple checking each and every door, and make sure to turn off all the lights on my way.  On the table in our foyer, we have a hand/bowl thing.  It has a motion sensor, and looks something like this:

photo credits

I turned off the foyer light and the hand in the damn bowl slapped down and screamed "AHHHH-HHHAAAA.  GOTCHA!"

Motherfucker!  My heart skips a beat.  I hate that damn thing.  I pick up the damn bowl and turn the switch to OFF.

I finally get to my bedroom, crawl into bed, and dream sweet dreams of road construction...