I was just sitting here, minding my own blogness, typing away and thinking about how to write about my marriage without sounding flippant or sarcastic (because these things are a way of life in our household, which is a nice balance from the occasional inopportune moments of giddiness which have been known to interrupt serious movies and intimate interludes), when I hear "MOM! COME HERE!" in a voice clearly indicative of my daughter mistaking a meat grinder for a pillow.

I stumble and limp and berate myself for sitting with one foot tucked up so as to create pins and needles for the charge down the hallway, and generally get to Emily's room as ungracefully as any human can be expected to move without benefit of sedatives. Her room is now eerily quiet, proving that the enormous attack spiders have, in fact, kidnapped her and taken her away to the magic mountain so that she can be devoured by angry weasels wearing polka-dot ties, and I'm walking from the relatively brightly lit living room into a mostly dark child's bedroom.

So is it any wonder, then, that when I looked at her loft bed and came face-to-face with the two-foot-diameter purple and yellow lion claw that Willem was so kind as to purchase for Emily at a hockey game, I had a moment of mind-erasing panic? Seriously. I'm not sure exactly what I thought it WAS, but it was obviously some sort of threat to my bodily integrity. By the time I was able to convince myself to inch the rest of the way into the room and sneak past this harbinger of doom, Emily was fast asleep again and was a tad irritated with me for turning on the light.

At least I didn't attack the claw with a baseball bat (not that I had one with me in the first place, which is probably a good thing for my children's eventual therapy bills) or rouse my husband to make him protect me from the big bad claw.

And now as soon as my heart rate dips back below 250 beats per minute and I stop hearing colors, I'll head to bed myself.