My mom’s home from the hospital today, she’s doing much better overall, which is good, because I have to get home tomorrow before 5 to help my husband deal with car trouble.
I didn’t work on Deadshifted today at all — it just needs one more decomma-ing and appropriate chapterization pass, which I can do this weekend probably. All I did was watch CSI and Castle with my mom, while wearing pajamas, which felt pretty awesome.
I do have a funny story to share however, before I go to sleep tonight, so here goes:
So last weekend prior to my thing at Borderlands, my husband and I were spending the night at my in-laws, since their house is closer to San Francisco. While we’re there we crash in my niece’s room, which has these two horrific clown music-box figurines. (My niece is two. They’re not traumatizing to her….yet.)
So we’re there, and we’re making fun of them, and my husband takes one of them and winds it up to see what it’ll play…and it doesn’t. We assume they’re just crazy old (which they are) and go on ignoring them.
Fastforward to last night, when my husband called me up at 10 to say he was going to sleep (he’s up there to be closer to his work since I’m out of town). And then he calls again at 11:30, and shouts, “Can you hear that?!?!” into the phone and holds it up to something that’s sporadically plinking. Like the beginning — or ending! — of a horror film, or the exact point in a video game when your controller would begin to vibrate to alert you to Bad Things Here.
It’s the clown music box, a week after being wound, in the dark, running super slow.
I tell him to take it and run and throw it in the backyard, because it’s haunted, and he’s all, “Well, if they find me holding myself in a corner in the morning, you’ll know why,” and then I’m all, “Take it into the living room at least!” and he’s all, “No, then it’ll kill my parents!”
In retrospect I should have told him to take it outside and throw it in the pool.
It kept going, and we couldn’t even tell what song it was supposed to be playing, it was so awful and herky-jerky.
Luckily, he survived. (Ed note: I do not believe in ghosts or hauntings.) And so did my mom (which I knew she would, but still, sick parents get you worried and worked up in a way few other things can) and all will continue to be right with the world tomorrow. Phew.