Gunshots in the night.

Well, yesterday was one heck of a day. It was so full-on, that I wanted to use a much stronger word than just "heck"... but hey, I'm trying to be polite and protect y'all from my bad language.

The kids started arriving at 7 am and by 9 o'clock I had 7 of the little darlin's. Which is usually no problem, but yesterday was just a madhouse with a lot of various things goin' on. While I was dealing with a couple of other grown-ups late in the day, ( yes, I got to talk to real life, non-drooling grown-ups for a change) the little natives were getting restless... and y'all know that the best way to soothe the savage beasts is with balloons. No matter how cranky or how tired a child is, give 'em a balloon or two, and peace reigns.
If only for a few minutes.
If they start getting bored again, just blow up a different colored balloon and they think it's the best balloon yet... and the peace and giggles are just magical.

So by the time the munchkins all left at almost 7 last night, I was knee deep in balloons. 100 balloons in the packet and there were only a few left. I'm surprised that I had any air left in me.

And man, was I tired. Bone-achingly, it's hard to put one foot in front of another, tired. With a capital T.
I made myself a quick sandwich for my dinner, only ate half of it because I was too tired to chew, because even my teeth were exhausted... then I herded all those dozens upon dozens of balloons into a corner ...and hit the hay by 9 o'clock.

And got woken up at 11, by gunshots. Gunshots. Clear as day. And you know what? I was so stinkin' tired that I just sort of shrugged and went right back to la-la-land. I obviously hadn't been shot, had I? So I just went right back to sleep. Because man, I was tired.

And woke an hour later to more gunshots.
And then a couple of more.

Well, if someone was shooting at me, they were pretty obviously bad shots... and if they were just shooting up the neighborhood, I guess I would hear about it in the morning... so why worry, eh? ( now, this is a really quiet neighborhood and nothing ever happens here, let alone bad stuff, but when you're too exhausted to think straight, nuthin' makes any sense and anything can seem likely.)
So back to la-la-land I went.
And slept until almost 7 this morning.

It was daylight when I got out of bed, which is a very rare occurrence. I usually get up around 5 and it's always dark enough to need the lights turned on, to save me walkin' into something and killing my toes on the way to the bathroom.
So, the fact that it was daylight, well... it made the gunshots seem like less of a worry.
And the fact that I hadn't heard police car or ambulance sirens in the night... at least nobody had been killed. Maybe.
But I had better go check that all was safe and see how the neighbors had fared.
Because I may have been too tired to care during the night, but reality really hit once I was completely awake.

And then I came into the kitchen.

Remember those balloons? Well, the kittens must have thought it was party-hearty time last night. Because every single one of those balloons had been popped and there were (and still are, because I'm a lazy cow) remnants of balloons everywhere. On the floor. On the table. On the sofa... and even on the counter tops. In their food dishes and water dish. There was even one hanging off the handle of my coffee cup.

And the cats? Well, they were all sleeping like furry little angels. Like they had rid the whole world of fat, round, evil colored invaders... and were having a much needed rest after their " My, it's such a tough job, but somebody had do it", labors.
They did an excellent job of keeping our little house safe in the night.

God Bless 'em.