It sounded like a very large creature wheezing its last breaths, rather loudly, somewhere in the vicinity of my bedroom. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it made me sit bolt upright in bed, wide awake in terror. I groped around for my glasses so I could hear the monster better and figure out what time it was — five a.m. After my heart started beating again, I talked myself into lumbering out of bed to go in search of the sound.

I crept downstairs, but the sound seemed to grow softer. I went into the Fortress of Solitude, and it was softer there too. Clearly that meant the monster or murder or killer robot was in my bedroom. Fuck. I tip-toed to the bedroom and the wheezing grew louder. I kept the light off even though it was dark and slunk towards the windows. The monster was out on the roof.

Or it was some sort of malfunctioning sprinkler making ungodly noises that woke me up from a dead sleep.

The whole episode has thrown me off my game. It caused me to sleep until 9 a.m., which means I didn’t get to the grocery store until 10 a.m. without my coffee.

The lack of coffee caused me to give a very detailed sales pitch about the joys of the red canvas Target shopping bags to the old woman with a goldfish embroidered on her t-shirt who made the mistake of complimenting the bags.

So now it’s nearly noon and I haven’t showered or written that book review or looked at the want ads or responded to that e-mail from that freelance client or had a second cup of coffee or cleaned Supergenius HQ in preparation for the Tibble invasion tomorrow.

It’s going to be an odd day.