I am the glue.

I left town for the weekend to go to the college homecoming football game. And then hell broke loose at home. It would seem that my very pressence prevents the hell-mouth under our house from opening at any given moment. While it's a bit unsettling to know that an ancient Native American burial ground resides under our hot tub slab, I feel pretty good about being a universe calming force. I'm like Keanu Reeves.

As I left the house Friday, Abby had the pleasure of meeting our reasonably benign poltergeist, Ralph. He explained how he had been a logger/prospector from when Kenmore was a thriving strip-mining/gold rush town, then he sprinkled the cats with fleas. The dogs were riled up by the zombie corpse of the bird that had flown into our living room window, after it was reanimated by the dark nexus swirling beneath the floorboards. It could only fly in circles, so every three minutes the dogs could smell and see it's delightfully decaying body soar past the window.

Saturday morning the flea-hosting cats had decided that they would finally brave the trek upstairs to give their parasitic guests the grand tour. They made stops at the couch, the other couch, all over the floor, in the crib and on the window sill. All told, the kitties spread their hair sufficiently to send the pregnant lady into a justified, yet overexerting, cleaning binge. Meanwhile, the dogs smelled cat everywhere, and found paper towels to eat. I think an evil curse was placed on the paper towels at the paper towel factory to make them irresistible and un-poop-able.

This lead to the overexerted, under slept, back-achey, sore stomached, pregnant lady wrestling a disgusting party favor from a possessed dog's back end. That's when she let me know how bad things were going. Then she went all Exorcist on her water bottle while trying to swallow some vitamins.

Of course, as I walked in the front door, things returned to normal. The gates of Hades creaked shut. The dogs stopped getting along with the cats. The blood stopped oozing from the walls.

So, the new rule of the house is this: I can't leave for extended periods of time. At least without finding her some ancient artifact or talisman.