Short Stories

Two nights ago I was woken up at one o'clock in the morning by the sound of a loud scream. I sat bolt upright in bed, heart racing, before jumping up and flicking on the light and then waking up Russ (THE world's heaviest sleeper) and telling him one of our kids just screamed. We both rushed to their rooms only to find them dead asleep. And the house empty and quiet (besides my pounding heartbeat.) We checked all the rooms anyway. "I SWEAR I heard a scream... maybe in my dreams? Sorry, honey!" I apologized. After which we went back to bed and I felt incredibly stupid.

Fast forward to last night. It's 10 pm and I'm switching out my last load of laundry for the day when I hear the same blood-curdling scream through the back door. Russ's ears perked up, he was in the living room and heard it this time too. Turns out some angry raccoons were fighting over the torn-open garbage bag that Kendall had taken out the day before but failed to put inside the garbage can.
"I KNEW I heard a scream!" I declared. Never in my life have I been more pleased to discover raccoons destroying my back porch.
The end.

On Wednesday I donated blood for the very first time at a Red Cross blood drive down at my kids' school. I followed all the instructions about what to eat/drink/do beforehand and had a relatively easy time, aside from mentioning at the very end of the draw that maybe I was getting a little light-headed, and inadvertently setting off an "INITIATE EMERGENCY RELIEF MEASURES!" type panic response in my over-zealous blood-drawer guy. I was totally fine, really.

Fast forward four hours. I'm standing in my kitchen trying to decide what to make my family for dinner when I suddenly start to feel queasy. Like, really queasy. So I head into my bedroom thinking I might need to throw up (in the privacy of my own bathroom) but suddenly become so dizzy that I have to drop to the floor with my head between my legs. I've fainted once before and I could tell I was seconds away from it happening again. Once again I woke up my husband (who was napping on the bed). "Where ARE you?" he sat up and looked around for me confusedly. And that's how I ended up getting Chinese takeout delivered to me on the couch by my caring husband and not moving for the next three hours straight.
The end.