I hadn’t meant to let the blog drop again. Another one of my resolutions this year was to maintain this blog a little more regularly. First failure of the year! I’m a little bit behind on the daily doodles as well, but I refuse to acknowledge it; the month isn’t over yet, so I’ve plenty of time to increase my daily average.

But I’ve dropped the ball only because I’ve been busy helping H.E. keep his own resolutions. He wanted to complete something by his birthday this year, and he managed to do it a week early. I helped. I really did. And on our way to celebrate his accomplishment, he somehow managed to tumble down some stairs and bend a heavy metal railing with his skull. Refusing to let that get him down, he insisted we celebrate anyway, so went to the German bar despite his copiously bleeding skull and his looking like the elephant man, with half of his face all swollen and dark purple, one eye blackened shut.

I know. He gives new meaning to the word hard-headed.

Anyway, last night, long after we had both dozed off in between his applications of an ice pack to his I-am-not-an-animal face, we both woke to a brief buzzing, vibrating sound. Freaked me out, let me tell you. It happened around two in the morning, and that time of night is never good for me—it’s when nightmares like to trot about my sleepy neighborhood and crap on my peace of mind, so anything unusual is suspect.

The vibrating sound was definitely unusual.

I couldn’t figure out what it was, though. It didn’t quite sound like a cell phone on vibrate, and it didn’t sound like an alarm of any sort. Besides, it was brief—a buzz-buzz, and then silence. Nothing more. But it was loud enough to wake me, concern the cat sleeping at my feet, and pull H.E. from a dream, one in which two bowling balls bumped into each other and arced like lightning, the buzz-buzz in real life translating to a dream of bowling ball electricity.

So we waited, hoping to hear it again. We checked our phones, listened to the computer humming, looked around to see if we were missing anything. Then … buzz-buzz-buzz! There it was again. It was my toothbrush, sitting in its charger, probably over-charged.

My cat jumped, stalked the bathroom sink. H.E. laughed, and I cursed. “Damn it! That probably means I need a new toothbrush again.”

I have one of those Oral B power toothbrushes, the kind you never have to wear your arm out to use. My very first one was a gift from my mother, but it died during my trip to Australia when I stupidly left it on the charger before leaving. When I got home, it never turned on and off the right way again, and I had to get it replaced.

So there I was, thinking this toothbrush is probably on its way out, too. I got up, experimentally took the toothbrush off the charger, turned it on, and then suddenly was unable to turn it off. No matter what I did, the toothbrush ran and ran, and ran, and ran, its buzzing a siren in the two o’clock darkness.

Groggy and bewildered, we both just wanted to get back to sleep. I frowned at the toothbrush. “How do I get it to stop?”

H.E. reached for the toothbrush and tried the buttons himself, but nothing worked. It buzzed on and on.

“Where can we put it to keep it quiet?”

H.E. shrugged, wrapped the toothbrush up in a sweater and put it away, and the buzzing became muffled and not quite so bad. We lay on our sides and waited. It buzzed away, and all of our eyes were wide open. Well … all except H.E.’s black eye, that is.

Later, it grew quiet again, so H.E. unwrapped it to see if it was truly dead. It wasn’t. It buzzed again and wouldn’t stop. It drove us insane.

“Put it back in the sweater,” I suggested. But no, H.E. didn’t want to, in case the toothbrush got overheated and exploded—definitely the last thing we’d need. So he finally stuck it in the freezer, where the buzzing bothered no one but the leftovers and ice cube trays.

Silence. Blessed silence.

Then giggles.

In the darkness, I could see H.E.’s multi-colored face grinning at me. “You and your zombie toothbrush,” he said. “The toothbrush that wouldn’t die.”

And as I finally started to doze again, feeling safe from prowling nightmares, he HAD to keep me on my toes…

“Maybe your toothbrush is trying to warn us about something, like maybe all of your appliances are getting ready to attack one day. What do you think?”

I think my elephant man just stirred up the scary ponies in my neighborhood.

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