Now I have a sore throat, too! From screaming.

Now that my kids are old, they're all in school during the day -- well, I mean not right now, since it's summer and stuff. But when school is in session all my kids are gone during the day. Settled? Okay.

One school day the furnace guy came. He was working on the furnace while I wandered around the house doing random things. One of those random things was going into the guest room downstairs near the furnace room to clean it or something. I don't really remember what I was doing and it is irrelevant to the story anyway, so settle down, you. So I went into the guest room and as I reached to pick something up from the floor a male voice coming from the direction of, indeed, inside of the bed said, "Hi." (In a low, male-sounding voice). "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!" I said, just as what I thought was a spider, but was actually nothing at all landed on my arm. "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!" I reiterated. This was accompanied by a little scaredy-dance and flailing arms (trying to dislodge the imaginary spider, of course). When I came to, Tanner was smiling amusedly/bewilderedly at me from the bed. "Did you forget I stayed home with a sore throat?" He says, in that now-familiar throaty voice that had scared the skidoobies out of me moments before.

"Oh yeah," I say.

"Geez," he says, eyebrows raised mockingly.

"Sorry," I say. And then I have a giggle-fit. Part of the giggle-fit stemmed from the fact that the furnace guy was in the next room. I giggled wondering what he must be thinking at this point. He could only hear the screaming, not any of the resolution. And then I stopped giggling and started wondering why the furnace guy hadn't come in to make sure everything was okay. I mean, from the alarming--nay--blood-curdling scream I had just let fly, he could have reasonably surmised that I had been attacked by some...some...I-don't-know-what!

Well, I was never one for confrontation, so I sneaked back up the stairs and acted like nothing happened. Eventually the furnace guy finished his job and handed me the bill. I thanked him and added, "Oh, sorry about all that screaming. I forgot my son stayed home with a sore throat." "I wondered what that was," he said. I didn't say Thanks for saving me! I could've been being killed, for all you knew! or anything like that. I had said that to my kids once when I found a giant Chinese cockroach in the washing machine (while doing Bob's China laundry, obviously) and screamed bloody murder for a solid 15 seconds. They had no response to that and I figured the furnace guy wouldn't either, so I let it go. Still, the kids know about my overreacting tendencies. What was his excuse?

Did I mention I'm easily startled?