If You Are Calling From A Secret-Spy Phone, Please Press 5

I have been so tired lately, but tired in a good way. It’s not that depressive exhaustion where you want to go to sleep as soon as you walk in the door because you can’t think of anything worth staying awake for. I’m tired in the I have way too many things I want to cram into my day so I’m staying up way too late then getting up way too early way. Somehow this is working out for me though. Even though I’m up until the wee hours (which I must admit aren’t quite as wee as they were back when I was young) I’m still managing to roll out of bed at a fairly reasonable time in the morning. Reasonable enough that I get to work within an acceptable timeframe.

As exciting as my sleeping and waking patterns may be that is not what I was intending to ramble about this evening. I popped back onto the face of the planet for the express purpose of sharing a piece of the continuing saga of Spy Baby and her adventures in dysfunction. I know I haven’t been quite as forthcoming as of late in regards to the mischievous munchking but that does not indicate a lack of effort on her part. It’s mostly the afore-mentioned scheduling cram. If you’re upset about it you can blame my newest distraction.

Enough digression.

This morning I got up slightly after the sun which is still incredibly early these days, crawled out of my bed (quite literally since I am still lacking a bed frame which leaves the box spring and mattress on the floor and I find it to be much simpler to just roll out onto my knees some mornings rather than attempting to reach my full height before my balance has kicked in) and slunk into the bathroom for a shower. I’m sure I woke up at some point because my memory of the morning is all hazy, like in a movie flashback, until I stepped out of the shower. Everything after the shower is like an HD playback. So out of the shower, wrapped in a towel and thinking the house seemed strangely quiet I heard my phone beep in my bedroom. That’s odd because no one that I know is coherent enough to call me at that hour of the morning. Most people I know don’t wake up until I’m halfway to work. I’m jealous of those people.

Anyway, the phone beeped, I pondered the meaning of the beeping and then opened the door to the girls’ room to cheerfully sputter their wake up call. I’m not typically a cheerful morning person but my good spirits in the morning seem to really annoy the kids and so it’s worth it to me to make the extra effort. It’s passive agressive but I take what i can get. As I walked through the bathroom I tossed over my shoulder a suggestion that if SB hurried she could beat PK to the potty. Those two have a mini-war waging over who gets to relieve themselves first in the morning. Never mind the fact that we actually have two bathrooms and if they both really had to go someone could just run downstairs. No, they insist on racing each other to the toilet.

I went into my bedroom and was dressing when PK asked me where SB was. “In her bed?” I replied. PK said that she wasn’t there. I think most parents would freak out when told that their child was missing from her bed but at this point I am innured to the shock. Ever since adding the alarm to the front door and the extra lock to the top of the balcony I haven’t been frightened when SB disappears. There is certainly plenty that she could be doing to harm herself but since she’s been locked in she usually doesn’t do much more than turn on the television.

I walked into the hallway and called down the stairs for her but she didn’t answer so I listened for a moment but heard nothing but silence. It sounded heavy and a little foreboding. There should have been cartoons blaring on the tv or the telltale signs of cereal being spilled across the kitchen floor yet I heard nothing. “SB,” I called again, “What are you doing?” Finally a little voice piped up from the living room. My little Spy Baby may be a master of espionage but she still has the high pitched squeak of a three year old girl, all full of innocence and excitement. It’s unnerving sometimes and was particularly bizarre when she answered me with, “I just checking my email!”

Just to make this perfectly clear, I did not give my three year-old and email account. There are those who would accuse me of lacking certain obvious parenting skills but in this area I have not failed to exercise restraint and common sense so when she said she was checking her email my stomach clenched at the thought of of what she was doing. I then heard music fill the air followed by tiny footsteps clumsily running up the stairs. At the top SB informed me that she was just turning some music on before she went running into the bathroom to berate PK into getting off the can so she could make some pee pee.

A moment later I stopped laughing as the music abruptly cut off downstairs. Sensing a disturbance in the force I went downstairs and slowly approached my laptop which was facing the couch away from me. I walked around the ottoman, lifted the screen of my laptop and was confronted with the BSOD informing me that it was time for a memory dump. I growled and restarted the laptop and went on with my day.

It actually wasn’t until I spoke with Cheri later in the day relating this story to her that the true import of the morning events became clear. Cheri simply suggested that perhaps SB was checking her email. I have obviously let my guard down too much which has allowed SB and her organization to further infiltrate my household. Furthermore it is clear that she has begun training again but this time she has moved from weapons to technology. I thought we had moved past this when I stopped taking her to Rachelle and Frank’s (could their aliases be more obvious?) but apparently her handlers have found new ways to make contact. I’ll simply have to be more diligent. Can you password protect a microwave?