This was it. The moment was here. My fate has been decided, my time here on earth was done. Right in front of me…staring me in the face like a uncomfortably calm night creature… was the answer to the lifelong question: “How exactly do I die?”
*The following events are based on ALL true events. Am I dramatic? Perhaps. Does it make for a kick ass story? ABSOLUTELY. Enjoy!*
It all started on a beautiful spring Monday in Iowa. The sun was shining, the breeze was light, and my day started off seemingly normal, much like any other day. I was woken by the loud crash of my bedroom door flying open at the hands of my all-too-energetic preschooler. I immediately kissed my warm, comfy bed goodbye in anticipation that the NOT AT ALL APPRECIATED early morning door slam would then start the chain of events that wakes up my teething one year old.
I was right. Just like clockwork, the crabtastic toddler started screaming “MOOOOOOMMMMAAAAAAA!” at the top of his tiny, snot-filled lungs. So downstairs we go: Breakfast. Toddler tears. Preschooler sassiness. Angry mom. Coffee. Preschooler tears. Preschool. Meltdown. Lunch. Coffee. Meltdown #2. Nap time. JOKES ON ME, NO NAP TIME. Snack. Coffee. Dance Class. Work. Repeat.
Since my patience level with my children was running drier than the Sahara Desert, my winter bod could use some brushing up on before pool season, and the weather was SERIOUSLY awesome, I made the (unbeknownst to me, LIFE-ALTERING) decision to hop back on that ol’ bicycle. I thought to myself: “HEY, FLUFFMASTER 5,000. PUT DOWN THE EASTER CAKE, GET YOUR SPANDEX ON, AND RIDE THAT DAMN TWO-WHEELED SWEAT MACHINE TO WORK! YOUR ASS WILL THANK YOU!”
GENIUS! Not only would I burn a few calories, but I would also get some much-needed head-clearing mommy time away from my two tiny terrors. Done and DONE. *Disclaimer: am I currently eating said Easter cake as I type? Yes. Should you judge me because I think I have PTSD and am stress eating? HELL NAW. Well…actually… yea, you probably should, because I am being dramatic. But I digress.*
So here I am. It is 10:00 pm and I am currently loading my convenient bike storage pouch up with all my take home work crap and getting ready to head off on my nighttime journey home. (HEY! Don’t judge me for having a bicycle storage pouch! It holds all sorts of awesome paraphernalia! Currently, it is holding my work keys, cell phone, ipod, paperwork and some bills that need paid. NORMALLY, though, it holds really SWEET items like snacks, chap stick, and Rumchata shooters water. It holds water 😉 Be jealous!)
I buckle up my helmet (SAFETY FIRST, SUCKAS), get my kick-ass music going, and hop on my body-powered traveling machine. I love the feeling of that night breeze rushing across my ever-aging face. Before I even got a block away, I fleetingly realize I forgot to refill my water bottle before I left. No biggie, though, it only takes me about 10 minutes to get home and since I am not a fish and can go 10 minutes without aqua, I brush that fleeting thought aside….
As I carry on my homeward journey, I giggle as I think about what my current theme song would be. Don’t you ever do that? Do you ever watch people and think about what their theme songs would be and then sing them as they walk by? Like in the movies when a new character is introduced and a piece of music comes on that foreshadows the inner spirit of that particular person? No? It’s just me, then? You are definitely missing out. Try it, it’s pretty enjoyable. It only took me a whole whopping 2 seconds to think of my current theme song. I shouldn’t even HAVE to tell you this because I simply cannot see why EVERYONE wouldn’t immediately know, but click below if you give up.
Didn’t guess correctly, eh? Give yourself a subtle punch in the face. Not hard enough to hurt, definitely not hard enough to leave a mark, but JUST hard enough to make you try harder next time. Also, this song freakin’ rocks and I would encourage you to crank up the ol’ speaker box and let this baby serenade you into the afternoon. And don’t even TRY TO LIE and tell me that this song does not give you a very hilarious visual of me in my bicycle helmet trolling down the road in the late hours of the night. Go ahead, get your giggle on. Mmmmmkay now focus, pull your s*** together, we are moving on….
So here I am gazing across the dark cornfields, enjoying the beauty of the moon, and reveling in the cool breeze hitting my face. I am only about 5 blocks from home now, so my breathing is starting to get heavier than a sopping wet sumo wrestler. I repeat, NOT IN SHAPE YET. Give me time, people! In my defense, I had taken a short detour to swing through the post office to mail my bills, which added to the length of my original cardio requirement. I wasn’t even ashamed for ONE MILLISECOND while the car behind me waited patiently for the crazy girl on the bicycle to unzip her convenient bike pouch, pull out and check each bill for a stamp (I cannot be trusted, a recheck is a requirement), drop them in the mail box, re-zip her trusty pouch, and start the slow pedal descent down the exit. I wasn’t ashamed of doing that at all. NO RAGERTS! In fact, I stood tall and proud as the fellow patron’s headlights shone from behind me like a beacon of light from Jesus himself. Actually, knowing the events that were about to unfold and how I almost lost my life shortly thereafter, I think it actually WAS a sign! Maybe I was SUPPOSED to follow the light! Maybe that was my personal lighted entry in to the gated glory that is Heaven! But, alas…here I sit. Alive and eating the leftover fatty Easter cake like a real lazy ass. So I guess we will never know…I’ve never been a good opportunist. Moving on.
By now you must be thinking, “Holy hell, woman. Stop rambling and just TELL ME HOW YOU ALMOST DIED! FOR PETE’S SAKE, YOU PSYCHO!”
Well, it’s your lucky day. Here we go. Reminder, I was about 5 blocks from home at this point and starting to daydream about my supple Tempurpedic and the impending slumber to follow. I arrive at one of the last intersections before my home sweet home. I don’t particularly care for this intersection, as it is where the street lights end and the darkness takes over. It’s just a short stretch, though, so is normally still worth the night time ride. Also, I have super awesome bike headlights to help light the way, soooooo there’s that…
I cross the street and take a sharp left on to the dark sidewalk. My LED headlight is appropriately lighting the sidewalk JUST ENOUGH to catch the fearful sight that I have always dreaded. Two. Glowing. Eyes.
That’s it, that’s all I could see. Two glowing night time eyes that were frozen still, staring straight at me from the dead center of the sidewalk ahead of me. My adrenaline kicked in so fast that before I had even thought twice, my bike was screeching to an immediate halt. And there we were, the mystery eyes and me were involuntarily and immediately entered in to a late night sidewalk staring contest from approximately 15 feet away. I wasn’t moving a muscle, so as not to startle the beast. The beast eyes sure as hell weren’t moving either, this creature was staring straight in to my soul and obviously scared of NOTHING. My heart started to race as I squinted my eyes, trying to focus on the outline of the creature. (I made a mental note to invest in some headlights that reach 25 feet ahead, instead of the feeble 10.) I needed to figure out what type of night beast I was dealing with here. To my relief, I noticed that this beast could not be much taller than 2 feet, maybe even closer to 1 1/2 feet. I still could not see the type, color, or even true shape of this horrid beast, but I could catch a glimpse of fluffy tail. A fox maybe? Super sweet house cat? I couldn’t tell, but the suspense was KILLING ME! I mentally sorted through all of my options:
- I could continue to stand here, like a damn sally, and wait until the light of day to save me.
- I could turn around and bike an additional 7 miles to come around from the other side. Not only would this add time on to my already-late night, but that ENTIRE ride would be without street lights. WHO KNOWS WHAT TYPE OF MONSTERS I WILL COME ACROSS OUT THERE?!
- Buck up, get on my bike, and keep flippin’ riding right through the danger.
After about a minute, all with continued unbroken eye contact with this wild Iowa wildabeast, I decided on a mashup of choices #1 and #3. I decided to wait until the animal moved from the sidewalk and then I would pull up my brave girl panties and ride on through. Yea, I am comfortable with that decision. I was scared to lose my ankles in a vicious bicycle cock fight, but comfortable with the decision of making progress towards the safety of home.
After another few minutes, and about 5,000 rapid human heart beats, the animal started to move. Actually, he SAUNTERED. That’s right, he was proving his dominance and staring at me while SAUNTERING at snail speeds down towards the ditch. Once the beast was deep down in the ditch crevasse and I could no longer see his glowing eyes, I took off like a real bat out of hell and pedaled faster than I ever have before. All of the muscles in my chubby-yet-strong thighs were shaking as I passed the place in the ditch where the night beast was hiding (ready to pounce on my pedaling ankles, I’m sure of it!) Once I passed the devil beast, I couldn’t help myself. I looked behind me. Much to my surprise and relief, the crazed pair of staring eyes were NOT chasing me like I had much anticipated. PHEW! Safe!
Wait for it….BECAUSE THAT’S NOT EVEN HOW I ALMOST DIED! I know, I know, you are super hungry, a little thirsty, and I just keep dragging on and on. Well, go get yourself a cheese stick, pour ya some delicious beverage, and stick with me!
So as I am FINALLY turning on my street, a sense of official relief washes over me. Not only was the rapid mystery beast NOT following me, but I was safely back in the watchful eye of the street lights. Any beast with half a brain would know to not venture in to the safe zone and to instead stay on stupid 24th street, where there is no light to protect your prey.
Faster than my legs were wanting to tolerate, I high-tailed it in to my driveway and whizzed past our two cars parked in the driveway. I leap off the trusty leg vehicle and hang my hideous helmet on the handlebars. I shakily walk to the front door so I can go inside to open the garage door. I grab the doorknob and quickly try to turn it. Nope. Not moving. Locked. *sigh* My dear husband forgot to leave the front door unlocked for me. Not ideal, but not a life ruin er. Luckily for me, my years of nagging him to “SERIOUSLY LOCK HIS CAR BECAUSE IT WILL GET STOLEN” have fallen on deaf ears and he continues to leave his car unlocked. So I hobble over to the driveway to use the garage door opener from his car.
WHAT THE…?!? LOCKED?!? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! YOU NEVER LOCK YOUR CAR, SIR!!!! Why now?!
It’s OK. Just breathe. You have a spare key hidden. *walks over to location which shall not be named and digs her sweaty fingers in to the secret location and pulls out key holder.* (I’m not sure why I decided to shake it first, but I did. Curiosity, perhaps?) No rattle. None. Just the sound of silence and defeat hanging in the air like giant loser fart. And like the true glutton for punishment that I am, I opened the container anyway to find exactly what I was expecting…….effing NOTHING. The key is not there.
Ok…..no big deal. Don’t panic. *looks around hastily to make sure the dark eyes have not made their way down the well lit street* Just go to the back yard, there is SERIOUSLY NO WAY THAT HE DECIDED TO LOCK THE PATIO DOOR. No. Way. It never happens. He wouldn’t have been THAT responsible on the one day that you need to seek shelter from the mystery mammal!
*Swish Swish Swish* was the grass under my dragging feet as I made my way to the back yard. Considering our yard backs to a corn field and is pitch black, truly darker than any devil force could ever be, I was not PARTICULARLY looking forward to making this trek. But unless I wanted to sleep on the sidewalk in a heaping pile of homeless, I needed to buck up. I slooooowwwwllllyyyy opened the fence gate, hoping the creaking wood sound would scare off any monsters lurking in the darkness. I looked around approximately 900 times before making my back yard entrance. My confidence rose as I walked up the wooded steps of our deck. As I approached the sliding glass door, I just KNEW it was open and this nightmare was over.
**** YOU ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME SON OF A BEESTING MOTHER FRICKER IT’S LOCKED!!
I tugged on that door handle over and over again, each time with more force than the last, in hopes that divine intervention would just magically open that damn door. Unfortunately, I kept getting the same outcome. The fricken door was DEFINITELY locked!
Ok, dear husband, now Momma is mad. That’s it, game over, I’M CALLING YOUR CELL PHONE AND WAKING YOUR SLEEPING BEAUTY ASS UP!
*Ring. Ring. Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring*
“Hi, you’ve reached Kyle Hansen. I can’t make it to my phone right now but if you….”
I hang up because I KNOW HOW TO LEAVE A DAMN MESSAGE AND I WON’T DO THAT BECAUSE THAT WON’T HELP ME OUT OF THIS LITTLE PREDICAMENT, NOW WILL IT?!
At this point, I couldn’t give two s***s about the lurking darkness beasts and I loudly storm down the deck stairs, through the backyard, and back out to the front entry way. Just like ANYBODY ELSE WOULD, I had to try each and every door handle just ONE MORE TIME to make sure I turned the doorknobs correctly (EVERYONE does this, amiright?!) Nope. Still mother-effing locked. Yep, key still missing from hidden holder.
*Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.*
“Hi, you’ve reached Kyle Hansen. I can’t make it to my phone right now…..”
Blah blah blah ANSWER THE ****ING PHONE, MAN!
I sit down on the front step, mentally processing all of my options WHILE keeping Kyle’s cell phone on speed dial. After about 10 calls, he never answered and my options were not ideal. Aside from riding my bicycle to my parent’s house, at stupid late hours and in to the VERY DARK countryside, nonetheless, or sleeping on my neighbor’s couch in my sweating bicycle clothes, my only viable option was to wake this man up. WHICH SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THIS HARD. Game. On. Sir.
I storm my ass to the back of the house again. I sit on our (luckily SUPER comfy) deck furniture and continue to call and text profanities over and over, truly baffled as to why he can sleep through all of this hubbub. *10 minutes of incessant phone calling has passed.* As my muscles start to die a little and sink deeper in to the cool deck furniture, I start to think that maybe the sound of my boisterous man voice would be heard through the bedroom window and will wake him up.
“Kyle.”
“KYLE.”
“KYLE ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME WAKE UP YOU TURD!”
Nothin’. No movement. No curtains being pulled back. No response. I start to think the worse: He. Must. Be. Dead.
And right then, at that very moment, my own life flashed before me as I heard the TRUE sound of the devil himself. It was coming from close behind me, not too far from my fence line. It was loud. It was intense. It was stomach turningly terrifying. It sounded exactly like this:
My heart instantly stopped and my body froze solid. That….is a coyote. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I am no Lenny Pepperbottom, but I sure as hell know that that is a friggen’ coyote in my back yard. Before I could even think, I dropped to the floor of the deck faster than a rock in a bathtub. I grabbed my phone because, CLEARLY an internet search was needed to confirm my scary coyote suspicion before I died of a heart-a-stroke. Google, being the real b***h she is, quickly confirmed my fear that not only was that a coyote sound, it was the sound of a coyote CHALLENGE.
And just like that, I suddenly became very aware that I was going to die tonight. I was NEVER going to be able to wake my narcoleptic husband in time to save me from this pissed off death-yote! Why was he so close!? Why was he making his presence known?! WHAT DID HE WANT FROM ME?! Before he started this challenging yap, I was being loud! I was stomping through the yard! I was shouting profanities at my husband through the back window! If that hadn’t scared the aggressive ****er away then nothing was going to! He was taunting me! Was this this beast I had run in to on the sidewalk? It had to be! OMG I DO NOT KNOW BUT I WAS NOT GOING TO MAKE AN EFFORT TO FIND OUT!
Like a true weeny city girl, I lept on to the deck couch, crouched down like a ninja, used the cushions to protect me, and stopped breathing. I couldn’t let the sound of my fat-girl breathing give away my location! And that’s when it started again…
I starting my end of life prayer. I thanked God for all of my blessings and I said goodbye to everyone I loved. I made a mental note to, upon my arrival at the (fingers crossed) pearly gates, that I could somehow send Kyle a sign to keep the pint-sized babies and pets inside the house for all of eternity so as to protect them from my “death by coyote” fate!
(Minutes) HOURS passed. The longer I sat on the deck, hiding from the howling heathen, the more I questioned my imminent cause of death. If the ‘yote didn’t get to me quick, I was surely going to die of dehydration. WHY DIDN’T I FILL UP MY DAMN WATER BOTTLE BEFORE I LEFT, GEEZ! (Ya like that foreshadowing there?) Every second that passed was one more second that Kyle was NOT answering his effing phone and the ‘yote was lurking, plotting my death. This was my new reality:
I was close to the end. I knew it. I could feel it. But damnit, I was not ready to die! Fight or Flight, woman…WHICH ONE IS IT? And in a last second surge of adrenaline, I. CHOSE. FIGHT.
So I jumped up off that deck couch like a rabid squirrel, grabbed a rock, chucked it at the second story master bedroom window and yelled:
“KYYYYYLLLLLEEEEEEEEE EFFFFFIIIINNNGGGGG HANNNNNSSSENNNNN WAKE UP RIGHT NOOOOWWWWWW YOU BASTARD!!!”
Like the divine intervention I was waiting for, I heard the sweetest sound. It was the sound of my massive, 120 lb dog getting up and shaking his ears. Not the sweet sound you were expecting? Well, it was for me! Because when my husband sleeps, there is virtually NOTHING that wakes him up. Not cell phones, not shouting, not rocks on windows, not even earthquakes. But when my dog stands up and shakes his ears in the middle of the night? THE WRATH OF KYLE SHALL SHORTLY FOLLOW.
The next thing I know, the window slides open and I hear a muffled “HUH?”
“YOU LOCKED ME OUT! THERE’S A COYOTE AND I’M ABOUT TO DIE!”
*runs down the deck stairs, sprints through the back yard, and races to the garage door.*
And like the sweet sound of Cosmo’s ear flapping, the next best sound graces my ears. The garage door was sliding open! HALLELUJAH, I SHALL LIVE! My life will NOT end today!
I race to get my bike in to the garage and shut the garage door as fast as I can. I storm through the door, expecting to see Kyle standing there, ready to apologize for locking me out and to get some explanation for my bizarre panicked reaction. But nooooo……he was nowhere to be seen. He simply opened the garage door and immediately went back to bed, presumably hiding from the wrath that he surely knew was brewing deep within me.
So I poured myself a LARGE glass of vino and tried to stop the anger from creeping in. I instead, sat comfortably in the safe confines of my coyote-free living room and mentally recapped those horrifying hours 30 minutes in the deep, dark wilderness of this vast Des Moines suburb.
I am grateful to have survived, but I am a fighter. I WILL get back on that bicycle AGAIN! Suck on that, devil-yote!
Mommy Vino 