It was 2:00 a.m. and the guest bed I had made up on our sofa lay empty. I stared at the unlocked back door and finally decided to lock it. Our friend, Jay, had come over for a neighborhood dinner party and had accepted our invitation to stay the night. I pulled the responsible parent card and had to leave the party at 9 to take the kids home to bed. I had packed them both onto my bicycle, Ana on front and Shelby in the bike seat, and we rode home under the stars. John joined us a few hours later, but Jay, I don't know what happened to him. I wandered the house checking on my sleeping babies, straightening their blankets, double checking the locks on the doors, when I happened to glance out of the front door. There was Jay's truck, parked on our street. So where the hell was he? My eyes slowly left his moonlit truck and followed the stretch of lawn, over the green bump and back to our house. Green bump? What the hell is that on the lawn? I rubbed my eyes and focused on the lawn more closely. There was a green sleeping bag in the middle of our lawn and Jay's bald head poking out of the top. I smiled at the thought of our elderly neighbors lumbering by for their daily sunrise walks to discover a giant man sleeping on our front yard. If that's not some worthy neighborhood gossip, I don't know what is. I had just curled up in bed again when I laughed out loud saying, "Hope the sprinklers don't go on!"
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