The joy that is climbing into a bed of freshly laundered sheets and blankets. You know what I’m talking about, {insert collective sigh here}. It’s glorious.

The other night I slid into bed and let the fresh smell of late summer breeze soaked linens envelope my tired body.

And the pillows! I like pillows. Lots and lots of pillows. I use one under my head, I wrap my arms around one in a fluffy cuddle hug. Since I’m a side sleeper, I like one wedged between my knees and one between my feet. It’s a nightly dance of coordinated tucking, but we make it work.

So there I was, sufficiently cradled, linen bliss.

But then…

There was a scratchy scratch just beneath my knee. One might think it a pesky down feather. We don’t have down pillows.

Irritated, I chirped, “But, everything is brand spanking new out of the wash, I tucked and fluffed and smoothed and tucked…”

Too tired to get up, I reached down to my knee with one hand. There was something there. A Lego? A toenail clipping? A rogue chip someone snuck in?

I pinched the foreign entity between my fingers.

It moved.

I pulled it up and out from under the covers. In a voice to rival Abe Vigoda I said to my husband, “Turn. On. The. Light. NOW!”

Without any delay or falling out of bed or knocking the lamp off his nightstand, my husband gracefully turned on the light.

There between my fingers riled the biggest, the sharpest, the wiggliest Madagascan Quadrupled Winged Yellow Flanked Beetle Stink Bug Monster I have ever seen in my life!

Now, I’m a relatively calm woman, and by “relatively” I mean all the time except when a foreign bug is between my knees in my freshly laundered bed.

I nearly lost consciousness.

With the grace of a wounded water buffalo, I trampled to the bathroom as fast as my spastic legs would carry. My husband, hot on my heals, inquired, “What! Whaaat!?”

I tossed that devil spawn into the nearest depository, the bathroom sink. I ran hot water, bleach, vinegar, anchovy juice, gasoline and then I lit a match! As the funeral pyre rose to the ceiling I declared, “Burn you vile enemy of the woooorld, you’ve ruined my liiiiife!” and I shook my fist in the air for dramatic effect.

Then, my husband offered what he felt to be a reasonable observation, “Well, I would have killed it first, but….”

I inhaled my next breath like a starving child on Thanksgiving. I slowly turned to the man I love with all of my being. I reached deep, deep in my soul for the compassion that sustains us. But it was too late. Someone was about to come to Jesus.

With an eerie calm I launched fire from my eyes and rebuked his nonsense, “I just had an uninvited Madagascan Quadrupled Winged Yellow Flanked Beetle Stink Bug Monster between my knees. My bare knees! In our freshly laundered bed. Let me offer a few descriptive words. Cardiac arrest. Anaphylaxis. Loss of faculties. Trauma. And you give me advice on how to dispose of it properly!? You, my dear man, do not get to decide.” And I shook my fist in the air for dramatic effect.

Without cracking a smirk or laughing at my hysterics, my husband held my shoulders as I shook over the sink. I stood there for a solid half hour to ensure there would not be a reintroduction.

Though he found my despondency mildly entertaining, he managed to offer a nugget of compassion, “You’re right sweetie, I’m sorry. You do whatever you want with that thing.”

Killing me softly, I whispered, “Thank you. Please get the whisky.”

I wept. I wept for the solace that was my bed, forever tarnished, gone.

And then, I did what any strong, reasonable minded woman would do. I placed a flame thrower on my nightstand. Right next to my Bible.  And the bottle of whisky.