There are nice ways to be woken up and there are not nice ways of being woken up. My personal favorite way of being woken up is not being woken up at all and Laura knows this, which is why I know there’s something wrong when she wakes me up on a weekend. Usually it’s because Arrow’s ripping up something he shouldn’t be, or is eating something he shouldn’t have been ripping up, or has thrown up something he shouldn’t have eaten. But sometimes it’s truly spectacular.

A few years ago Laura came rushing into the bedroom and began shaking me.

“There’s a bird in the air conditioner.”

Now, my brain did what I’m sure any right-thinking person’s would and assumed that this obviously random arrangement of words was part of some strange dream.

“Wake up! There’s a bird in the air conditioner.”

“Huh?” No this doesn’t seem to be a dream… I’m being shaken.

“There’s a bird in the air conditioner!”

“What do you mean, ‘There’s a bird in the air conditioner’?”

“I was letting Arrow out in the backyard and there’s a bird stuck in the air conditioner and I’m afraid that the air conditioner is going to turn on and the fan is going to hurt it so you have to come and get it out.” (Yes, it was a pretty healthy run-on.)

At this point I was awake enough to figure that there probably was something wrong because my wife is not usually a crazy person. So I went downstairs with her and out into the backyard, and, sure enough, there was a sparrow sitting inside our condensing unit. I still can’t figure out how it got in there; we looked all around the thing and couldn’t find any openings for it to have squeezed through. More to the point, what would have made it think a condenser would be a good place to hang out in the first place?

After assessing the situation I went back in to the utility room, grabbed a screwdriver, and turned the A/C system off. Then we removed the top grill from the condenser’s housing, keeping well clear of it in case the bird took off the second the cover came off. But she didn’t, so I had to reach down inside and scoop her out, at which point she was happy to fly away.

So this is how I know there’s always going to be fun when Laura wakes me up. This morning it was, “The dishwasher’s running and water’s pouring out under the sink.”

“Well, did you turn the water off?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Turn the dishwasher off.”

“It’s running out of the garbage disposal. I have a bucket under it now.”

“Yes, but it’s coming from the dishwasher. Turn the dishwasher off.”

“Aren’t you happy that my first thought was to come get you?”

“I’d be happier if your first thought was to turn the water off.”

So after checking that it wasn’t just a drain clog backing things up to the garbage disposal, it looks like we’re not going to be going up to Pennsylvania today after all. Instead we get to go shopping for a new garbage disposal and I get a fun new project.