morning.

what did i wake up to at 6:50 this morning? it wasn't mice scratching around in the walls, squealing with delight. it wasn't traffic, nor was it my bathtub faucet, which has gone from dripping through leaking and is now just on. no, dear readers, i woke up to a steady, rhythmic thump thump thump coming FROM THE DIRECTION OF MY BACK DOOR.

now, if you read this blog regularly (i mean, how could you not?) you'll know that one of my main (yet least rational) fears is that someone's going to try to break into my apartment via the back door in my bedroom. i have nightmares of waking up to see a shadowy figure through the glass, of hearing the doorknob jiggling. so i wake up to what sounds like a rhythmic thudding on my back door. yeah. my eyes POP open, dart around. it stops. i stop breathing, look at the backdoor. no one there, no one i can see through the glass, anyway. immediately every urban legend i've ever heard goes through my mind: stories about boyfriends whose girlfriends wouldn't let them back into cabins even though they'd scratched themselves bloody on doors, boyfriends whose decapitated hanging heads made thudding noises against car roofs. i turned on the lamp. i went to the humidifier and turned it off. still the thudding.

but it wasn't coming from the backdoor--what was it? it was coming from a box, one of the two boxes that still sit in my apartment from my move nearly three months ago. i figure, at this point why unpack it? god, i thought, a fucking mouse has fallen into this box and i'm going to have to do something about it. i looked into the box and found no mouse, no roach.

the heater, which has just been turned on this week, was blowing against the side of the box and making its lid thud against its side.

goddamned imagination.

*a sidenote: while typing this blog i actually just called someone "sallie goatvoice." wow, that's like...college-age-robert bitchery. hilary's response was, "when i first read that, i thought, what kind of italian name is that?"*