1:41 am, that's what the clock said to me when I looked at it blearily as the dog was going wild. "What's going on?" I thought to myself. The dog rarely barks and when she does, it's for attention. This time the dog was beside herself, running up and down the stairs--growling and snarling at the door. That was enough for me to be concerned.

I had just relocated myself to the couch downstairs about a half hour beforehand because I couldn't stop coughing. I didn't want to keep John up so I just decided to curl up and be miserable downstairs. I sat up in the darkness and said, "What's up? What d'ya hear?" and then I heard it too...the front door knob was turning! I thought for a moment, "Did we remember to lock the door before we went to bed?"( sadly, I'm a little lax here in the Cornfield, but I guess I probably shouldn't be). And then again, I thought a little harder, "HOLY SHIT! Did we or did we not lock the door?!?" With that petrifying thought running wildly in my head. I quickly screamed up the stairs, "John! There's someone here! And they're trying to get inside!"
He yelled back to me, "I heard! Don't worry, it's locked and I'm taking care of it!"
From downstairs I heard him throw up the window in our bedroom and bellow out into the darkness, "Hey! What's going on down there? What do you want?"
And then I heard, "Hey, it's ER...can I stay here tonight?" followed by some girlish giggles in the background. It appeared that ER was not alone.

Finally, it all came together for me, and my heart slowed a little. John's brother has just moved back into the state after his three year relationship ended, and he's staying with John's dad who expressed that there should be no sleepover guests of any kind...a rule that ER already broke last week, and because of this caught a little hell. This morning it was nice to see that he tried to give us a head's up. ER sent both of us a text message at 12:30 am asking if it would be ok if he brought a girl over to our house. Unfortunately for him, we'd already been sleeping for about two hours and never got the message.

ER is a good looking kid so to be safe, I think we should probably just give him a key...or we'll be waking up the neighborhood on a daily basis! Who knew our cuddle puppy was actually a half decent guard dog??