Erin L Grogan
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A Knock on the Door
One evening, I’m enjoying my routine at home, and I hear a sound that sounds like a knock at my front door. I know that I’m not expecting anyone that evening. When I think about who could be there, it sends a shiver up my spine. It’s too late for me to be expecting any visitors. Maybe if I just ignore them, they might go away. Yeah, I’ll do that. So, I go back to enjoying my movie on the television. It’s a good one, one of my favorites. I watch this movie frequently. I hear the knock at the door again. I tense this time when I hear the sound because I didn’t expect the noise to be heard again. So, I pause the movie to get back up again to investigate the sound, then I realize that’s stupid and sit back down. I stick with the normal plan and keep watch on my movie and ignore the sound. I restarted the movie. Well, I’m watching the movie and I realize it has been playing for what I believe to be quite a long time. So, I pause the movie and check to see if I hear anything. I don’t. I think to myself, could they have given up that? Then I realize that there are other ways for them to get into the house. So I check everything. The back door. Make sure that you locked it. The door that leads into the house from the garage. When I checked that door, I realized I hadn’t checked the garage door. So, I unlock the door that leads into the house and open it. When I see that the garage door is wide open. I look around in every direction of the garage to see if I see a human figure hiding anywhere. I realize they might hide on the opposite side of my car, but I’m too scared to go over and look. I think to myself, what if the person got into my house through the garage door? They couldn’t have. I would have heard the footsteps. Maybe I should check inside the garage. No, I don’t think so. So, I closed the door leading into the house. Then I lock it. The next place I check is the other rooms inside the house. Check the office and my bedroom. I also checked the guest bedroom. I close every door in those rooms once I’m done checking that the windows are locked. I keep wishing that I had a security system in my house. So, that way, all I could do was stay in one place to check the entire house. I can't think about that now. I need to focus on what needs to be done. Now that everything is okay in the house, I can get back to watching my movie. I turned on the television again and pressed play on my movie. Suddenly, I heard a crash. I got up from my spot, not worrying about pausing the movie, and went to investigate. I noticed that the garage door was open, and there was broken glass on the floor. Why was there glass on the floor? Why was the door to the garage open? I would have believed that it might have been the wind, but the garage door was closed. So, I got the broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass. Still freaked out about what I saw, I went and grabbed my phone along with a knife from my kitchen. Then I went back into the television room and started watching my movie again. Though I rewound the movie back to the part where I got up to see what was going on. Finally, I could finish my movie. I got up from the couch and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and went into the kitchen to get my morning soda. I saw an envelope on the counter that was addressed to me. I opened the envelope, and there was a letter inside. It read, Dear Beautiful, I love watching you. I watch you all the time. I love the way you walk, eat, and talk. When you smile, it makes my heart ache for that smile to be for me. You didn’t check your house that well before you went to bed. I could get in and leave you this letter. I will watch you some more. Love, your secret admirer. Well, I was reading the letter, and it sent shivers down my spine. I need to be more careful often. Took my soda to the bedroom and started getting ready for work. I took my clothes into the bathroom and got dressed. Can’t really see in or out because the view is so blurry. Picked up my keys and purse. Headed to work. I looked everywhere as I was going to my destination. I didn’t see anybody who looked suspicious. Finally, I was looking around so much that I decided I was being crazy, so I stopped. Maybe he has stopped himself. My long day finally ended. Once I got home, I made myself some dinner and sat down on my couch to watch a movie. Suddenly, I heard a knock at my door. I went to the door and called out. No one answered. So I unlocked the door and went outside. I saw nobody there. I turned around and went back inside. There was a letter lying on the doormat. I took the letter inside and started reading. It was exactly like the previous letter. This time, though, it was only one sentence, not more than one. It read, Dear Beautiful, I will enjoy watching you this evening. Love, your secret admirer. I wasn’t sure what to do because I thought that this was all over with this person. I guess not. I closed the garage door this time. So, there's no need to check Suddenly,that again. I doubt they will leave a letter at my house again. So I started watching my movie again and could finish the entire movie. I got back up from the couch and took my dishes to the sink and then went to bed. Not a single letter was found the next morning. Maybe he or she gave up on whatever they were trying to do because of all the precautions I took. Everything felt normal again. I stopped looking over my shoulder more often. Finally, one day I came home to find that someone was sitting in a chair in my house. I had recognized this person and asked them why they were doing this to me with these creepy notes. They told me they weren’t sure if I would ever be interested in them. I said What makes you think I am interested now? " Frightening me is not the best answer. They apologized and said Why don’t we try this out now? " Then we did.
By Erin L Grogan4 months ago in Fiction
Packing Boxes with Ease
When getting ready to move make sure you have all the essentials that you need to make your belongings safe. For example, bubble wrap, roll of paper and cardboard dividers. Once you have the essentials then take them all to one room in your house. That will be the room you will start on. The reason for putting your packing essentials in that room is that will be your first room. The first room should not be your kitchen, bedroom, or family room because those are the rooms that you will be using every day until you leave the house permanently. One of the room’s you might have would be a children’s room. There is my special way that your child/children can pack up their own room. The first box should go with you. This way the box can be opened right away on that very first evening. The last thing that you would want to have to deal with after a long day of moving would be to have a child with a nightmare. The next task at hand would be to put everything else away in boxes. I would suggest putting small items in Ziploc bags. The small items might be ninja swords, Harry Potter’s wand, Barbie jewelry, pretty much anything that runs in that category. When you pack up the books in the room make sure that they are in order that was displayed on the shelf. Book bag with school supplies and books should be left out. In a certain number of houses in this country you would have a hobby room in the house. That room would consist of Quilting, Sewing, Scrapbooking, Knitting, so pretty much any hobby that a person in the household would do indoors. For packing the boxes in this room, I would pack the room the way you designed the room in the first place. I don’t know about that much of these hobbies so I’m not sure the best way to organize the room. The next room would be the family room. The only suggestions that I would have to discuss about the family room would be is that if you have cords that come off your electronic devices completely don’t take them off. For the electronic devices I would tape all the cords together while still attached to the devices. Make sure two or more electronic device cords aren’t taped together. We wouldn’t want them to bang into each other and to have to figure out which cord goes with which device. The remotes should be taped to each device as well. The other belongings in the house that everyone has to box away would be pictures, mirrors, or any other items as well. Don’t do these items all together if you want those items in the same room that they were in before. Pack those items with that room. The items of your house that don’t have a specific room like the linen closet should have boxes alone as well. I believe that it is also important to organize your linen closet. The way I do it and the easy way I think would be to pack the items would be to have groups. Those groups are hair accessories, medicine bottles, medical supplies, lotions, cleaning supplies, towels, washcloths, hand towels, and miscellaneous items. The room that some people might forget or don’t even contemplate about would be the office. When packing up an office I would say to tape all the drawers to the outer perimeter of the desk or filing cabinet. If by any chance that will not work because of ruining furniture or the furniture is too weak to handle the trip to the new house. So, if you have to empty the drawers don’t empty the entire draw upside down into a box. I swear that once you finally open that box you will tell yourself, “why did I do that?”. When packing up a drawer it might turn out that the drawer had very little stuff inside. This is where those cardboard dividers that I told you to get in the first place would come in handy. For example, you empty the first drawer, still too much space in the box so then comes the divider, on top of the divider would be the second drawers items. This would continue on until you get a drawer with too many items. Any part of the furniture in the office that doesn’t have a drawer would go into a box by itself. If you have several shelves in your office don’t put all the items in the same box. Put the items in their own box and label the box as to where it goes in the office. The second biggest headache of a room to pack would be your kitchen. The first important detail with packing up your kitchen is to put everything in a box that you are going to use right away. For example, here is some of the items, toaster, coffee maker, frying pan, cooking utensils, eating utensils, cups and glasses as well. The last thing that you are going to want to do is to be searching for those items. It is important to categorize your kitchen, down to the last item. The way I like to pack my kitchen is to do baking, cooking and barbecue. Let’s start with the baking part of your kitchen. The way I am organizing my kitchen now with the spices would be all the ones to make cookies, bread and anything else is in the baking section of my kitchen. All of the baking, pizza and broiler pans. I put these items in the same box. Cake pans, muffin pans, bread pans, anything that goes with any of these items it put in the same box. Cooking appliances I would put together in a box or boxes. Towels, aprons and dish washing cloths should go in a same box. This is the same way it should go with everything else in your kitchen. The last room that I would suggest that you pack would be your bedroom. If you are married packing up your bedroom could turn into a yelling and annoying disaster. Let’s say your significant other put some wrong items into a box that you didn’t want to go into that box. The best way to handle this situation would be to pack up your own boxes. If your significant other doesn’t mind then go ahead and pack the boxes. When you are packing the room together make sure the boxes aren’t in their way. The only box that should stay in the bedroom should be the “open right away” box. The same box that I talked about that had to do with the children’s room. If you happen to have dirty clothes don’t worry about washing them at the house. Just take them to the new house and wash them there. I would say that the best place would be in some other section of your house. Make sure that all appliance cords are folded and taped together for each appliance. Now we are down to the point where you are going to have movers move these boxes and this furniture. The family room, dining room, kitchen and living room should all have their boxes put together. It would be great to have this done while you are packing the boxes. These are only my suggestions, so don’t take them too seriously. I wanted to be able to disclose this information because I thought they would be good ideas to someone else.
By Erin L Grogan5 years ago in Lifehack
