Oh, the Horrors!

I’m ready for my Stepford Wives’ lobotomy now. Just make me a robot so I can glide through life serenely, greeting the world with a vacuous smile.

“The Stepford Wives” and “The Ice Storm” were filmed here for a reason: suburban home ownership can be akin to living on a horror movie stage set. 

When did this occur to me? 

Perhaps, when the October snows parted and I came downstairs to see the branches of a tree splayed against the tall sunroom windows, gripping the glass like the arms of a big green monster. “I’m coming to get you,” is what I hear when I sit with my morning coffee. When will the tree guy get here to help?

Maybe my anxiety began during the summer when a squirrel ate its way through our screens, clawed through the cabinets in our kitchen and left crumbs scattered all over the counter. Not once, but any time we left the house with the windows open.

Or was it the time a bird rapped its beak against our window, darted away when I banged on the glass, only to return seconds later to tap, tap, tap some more? Forget water boarding: just sit the prisoners in a room with an incessant rapping for weeks on end — they’ll talk.

How about the time the bat looped around and around in tight circles over our backyard in broad daylight? That was fun getting the kids to run into the house quickly to avoid psycho bird above us.

Yes, there are moments I feel like Tippi Hedren (remember her from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds?”)  living here in the woods. I wonder whether it would be better to move back to the city, where at least the crazies are mostly of human origin. 

But, then I come down in the morning to see the mist rising over the pond, or step outside at dusk when the orange hued sky echoes the fiery glow of the autumn leaves. Okay, maybe I should think more “On Golden Pond.” 

Oh, wait, weren’t there some funky family dynamics going on in that movie?  Well, that’s a story for another day…