Read Online The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life by Melanie Shankle - Free Book Online
Authors: Melanie Shankle
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night.)
So that’s how we ended up at Discount Mattress making our first major purchase together in the form of a king-size bed with firm support. It was shortly thereafter that we also realized the key to a good night’s sleep was that we never share covers. Because Perry said I sleep under enough blankets to suffocate a normal person, and to that I said he was welcome to find his own solution. Which he did. In the form of the twin floral comforter I used all through college. He still sleeps with it to this day.
For those of you doing the math at home, that means he sleeps with a bed covering that’s well over twenty years old. So much for that plaid Ralph Lauren number I’d so painstakingly chosen when we registered.
Anyway, we’d been sharing a room for a few months when I discovered that Perry talks in his sleep. And he doesn’t just mumble. He makes loud declarations about things. There were nights he woke me up to ask if I could see the blue iguana coming out of our wall, or if I knew that there was a clown outside our window. You know, things that might send a person into an adrenaline-fueled reaction that leads to insomnia for the rest of the night.
And that’s why I didn’t really pay any attention to him the night he woke me up to ask if I’d just seen something small and furry run across our bedroom floor. I figured it was just another one of his sleep-talking ravings, and frankly, I was tired of getting all worked up about false iguana sightings and clowns wielding knives.
But a few mornings later, Perry woke up at the crack of dawn, which he unfortunately likes to do, and went into our kitchen todiscover a family of possums huddled in the corner like the Little Match Girl, except they were possums. You didn’t read that wrong. Possums. In our kitchen.
To make it worse, that’s when he told me he hadn’t been asleep when he saw something small and furry run across our bedroom floor a few nights earlier. Which meant there might have been possums. In our bedroom. And let’s be honest, possums in the kitchen are tragic enough, but in the bedroom? That’s enough to cause a full psychotic episode. I know this to be true because that’s what I had.
At times like this, it comes in handy that living with Perry is akin to living with Bear Grylls. He knows how to handle odd situations that most people never encounter. So he herded the possums out into the great outdoors and repaired a small opening under our kitchen cabinets that appeared to be their portal into our home.
The possum invasion was still fresh in my mind a couple of days later. Naturally, I’d scoured the entire kitchen with bleach, but there’s just a sense of discomfort that lingers when you know you’ve shared your food preparation space with an animal that belongs to the phylum Rodentia.
(I really don’t know if possums or the more formal, opossums, fall into the rodent phylum. But if they don’t, they should, with their beady little eyes and tails that I can’t even think about without wanting to dry heave. I can abide many things, but a hairless tail isn’t one of them.)
So I became concerned a few nights later when I heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Perry was out late playing basketball with the guys, because that was back when he was young and could do that kind of thing without tearing his meniscus or throwing out his back. I was home alone, and that meant I had to deal with thenoise differently than I normally handle these types of situations. By which I mean I couldn’t yell for Perry to come handle it.
I tiptoed over to the entrance of the kitchen and flipped on the lights, hoping to scare away whatever it was. And that’s when it happened.
Something threw a half-eaten piece of toast at me. A half-eaten piece of burned toast. I can still see the toast when I close my eyes. I can still hear the screaming that happened inside my head. It was like Friday the 13 th and A Nightmare on Elm Street all rolled into
So that’s how we ended up at Discount Mattress making our first major purchase together in the form of a king-size bed with firm support. It was shortly thereafter that we also realized the key to a good night’s sleep was that we never share covers. Because Perry said I sleep under enough blankets to suffocate a normal person, and to that I said he was welcome to find his own solution. Which he did. In the form of the twin floral comforter I used all through college. He still sleeps with it to this day.
For those of you doing the math at home, that means he sleeps with a bed covering that’s well over twenty years old. So much for that plaid Ralph Lauren number I’d so painstakingly chosen when we registered.
Anyway, we’d been sharing a room for a few months when I discovered that Perry talks in his sleep. And he doesn’t just mumble. He makes loud declarations about things. There were nights he woke me up to ask if I could see the blue iguana coming out of our wall, or if I knew that there was a clown outside our window. You know, things that might send a person into an adrenaline-fueled reaction that leads to insomnia for the rest of the night.
And that’s why I didn’t really pay any attention to him the night he woke me up to ask if I’d just seen something small and furry run across our bedroom floor. I figured it was just another one of his sleep-talking ravings, and frankly, I was tired of getting all worked up about false iguana sightings and clowns wielding knives.
But a few mornings later, Perry woke up at the crack of dawn, which he unfortunately likes to do, and went into our kitchen todiscover a family of possums huddled in the corner like the Little Match Girl, except they were possums. You didn’t read that wrong. Possums. In our kitchen.
To make it worse, that’s when he told me he hadn’t been asleep when he saw something small and furry run across our bedroom floor a few nights earlier. Which meant there might have been possums. In our bedroom. And let’s be honest, possums in the kitchen are tragic enough, but in the bedroom? That’s enough to cause a full psychotic episode. I know this to be true because that’s what I had.
At times like this, it comes in handy that living with Perry is akin to living with Bear Grylls. He knows how to handle odd situations that most people never encounter. So he herded the possums out into the great outdoors and repaired a small opening under our kitchen cabinets that appeared to be their portal into our home.
The possum invasion was still fresh in my mind a couple of days later. Naturally, I’d scoured the entire kitchen with bleach, but there’s just a sense of discomfort that lingers when you know you’ve shared your food preparation space with an animal that belongs to the phylum Rodentia.
(I really don’t know if possums or the more formal, opossums, fall into the rodent phylum. But if they don’t, they should, with their beady little eyes and tails that I can’t even think about without wanting to dry heave. I can abide many things, but a hairless tail isn’t one of them.)
So I became concerned a few nights later when I heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Perry was out late playing basketball with the guys, because that was back when he was young and could do that kind of thing without tearing his meniscus or throwing out his back. I was home alone, and that meant I had to deal with thenoise differently than I normally handle these types of situations. By which I mean I couldn’t yell for Perry to come handle it.
I tiptoed over to the entrance of the kitchen and flipped on the lights, hoping to scare away whatever it was. And that’s when it happened.
Something threw a half-eaten piece of toast at me. A half-eaten piece of burned toast. I can still see the toast when I close my eyes. I can still hear the screaming that happened inside my head. It was like Friday the 13 th and A Nightmare on Elm Street all rolled into
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