I woke up at 6:01 this morning. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except that I went to sleep at around 5:30 a.m.

No, I wasn’t out partying with Brad and George again. (That was last week.) No, I, Maria Diarrhea, was convinced -- convinced! -- that someone had snuck into my house while I wasn’t there and was hiding in the attic, waiting for me to fall asleep so he could torture and kill me. Never mind that, in order to get out of the attic, he’d have to make his way through a closet full of shoes, boxes and cleaning supplies. Yeah, that wouldn’t make any noise at all.

So, it started at around 8:30, when I heard one of the typical house noises one hears. Then I heard the noise about three more times, before going to bed at 11:00. Now, most people, when they hear such noises, (correctly) attribute it to the house settling. Not me. Oh, no. I go right to “CSI,” and where’s Nick Stokes when you really need him, huh?

So I went to bed and turned the alarm on. But that wasn’t enough, because I kept hearing something my brother said to me a while ago: “Alarm lines can be cut.” Um, hello? Have we just met? Do you not know me?!? Why don’t you just tell me there’s no point in locking the doors because locks can easily be picked? (Oh, lord ... not gonna think about it ... not ... gonna ... think ... about ... it...)

Anyhoo, so I went to bed, turned on the alarm, and put the alarm remote in my palm, because, you know, if someone comes into my room, I can hit the panic button, thus alerting an operator in Kalamazoo that I’m about to be gutted, and he will, in turn, call the authorities, who will arrive approximately 37 minutes after I’m dead.

So I finally got all these nasty thoughts out of my head when I heard one last noise. The noise itself didn’t scare me (I was too tired at this point), but as I turned my head in the direction of the noise, I saw what I thought was something fly over me. I don’t know if you have this, but when I move my eyes, I see what look like little mosquitoes -- they're actually just miniscule stains on my eyeballs, but if I move my eyes quickly enough, it looks like a big ol’ fly. At 3:30 a.m., though, that doesn’t really register.

So now I’ve got to contend not only with the rapist/torturer/serial killer, but with some unknown flying insect that is apparently also waiting for me to go to sleep before it attacks.

If you know me, you know I was not about to give either of them the satisfaction of sleeping. Hah! That’ll show ‘em. But of course, you also know that there was no serial killer, no large flying insect. No. Sadly, I am just a nutcase.