May 2002

No, this is the strange month.

Before I tell you what happened I have to describe the layout of my house. I live in a small house with a main floor and a basement. The layout on the main floor is as follows. First, draw a square and then draw a line straight down the middle of the square and another line across the center of the square turning the big square into four little squares. The top square on the left is the living room and the top square on the right is the dining room. Erase the line between the two top squares making one living/dining area. Now you have a large rectangle and two small squares. The bottom left square is the bedroom and the bottom right square is the kitchen.

At the lower corner of the living area on the wall between it and the bedroom erase some of the line to make a doorway. At the lower corner of the dining area on the wall between the dining area and the kitchen erase some of the line to make another doorway. At the lower left corner of the kitchen on the outer wall erase some of the line to make another doorway that goes to the bathroom (yes, the bathroom is off the kitchen because this is an old house and that's how they built it). At the same corner but on the wall between the bedroom and the kitchen erase some of that line to make the last doorway.

If you draw the doorways between the main rooms correctly you can circle the inside of the house without walking into any walls. The house is built this way because it only has a heating stove in the dining area. All the doorways allow the heat to circulate through the house in the winter. They also allow the cool air from a window air conditioner in the living area to circulate in the summer.

Now, in the kitchen against the wall between the bedroom and the kitchen is the stove and right beside it on the wall between the kitchen and the dining area are three shelves. On the middle shelf is a microwave. The display light on the microwave is so bright that it spills into the bedroom at night making it difficult to sleep. Because of this I always drape a kitchen towel (the one hangs on the oven door handle) over the front of the microwave before I go to bed at night. I put a kitchen timer on the towel to hold it in place.

All this month, at odd intervals, I find the towel back on the oven door after I drape it over the front of the microwave. As first when I find the towel on the stove I think I just forgot to put it on the microwave that night. A couple of nights I ask my husband if he used the towel to dry his hands and then hung it over the oven door instead of putting it back on the microwave and he tells me no. A few nights I have been awakened by the light from the microwave and have gone into the kitchen to put the towel over the microwave. Each time I am not really sure if I put the towel there before I went to bed.

Then one night on my way to take a shower I stop to put the towel over the microwave. After my shower I open the bathroom door and see the towel hanging from the oven door. This time I know I put the towel on the microwave and I get very upset because I think my husband has been playing a trick on me. He is in bed reading and I look at him and angrily ask him if he moved the towel from the microwave. He looks at me in total surprise and say no. Then I realize who has been moving the towel. It's my mother. This shocks and scares me so much I say out loud, "Mom, I know this is you. Please don't do this anymore, it's scaring me." For the rest of the month the towel stays where I put it.