Picture this font DRIPPING IN BLOOOOOOOD:

Lest you think I spend all of my nights drinking and punching and kissing (and you know I seriously don’t, right?), let me tell you about last night, which I spent BABY-SITTING and then DRINKING WINE AT THE BYRNES’ HOUSE. Ooh, did you feel that shiver, too? That was the spine-tingling chill of BEING A DORK. Wait, there’s more!

So after the evening spent with my former neighbors’ children—who are seriously like the most freakishly attractive and freakishly intelligent children on the planet, and I sincerely expect them all to grow up and simultaneously win Pulitzers and become motorcycle stuntmen—I headed over to Chez Byrne for what I used to call “grown up talk” when I was little, because whenever my parents would have friends over, they would always end up sitting around the living room drinking wine and laughing, and ignoring my offers to put on a show in front of the fireplace in any of my many costumes.

Had there been children at the Byrnes’ house last night, they too would have been rebuffed, and probably sent to bed or to beg in the streets, because Erin and Mat started talking about creepy local ghost stories, which are only scary if they are not from your locale, and these were definitely not. I was quickly reminded of what a total and complete wuss I am, because at one point I looked down and realized that I had made a tiny fort of couch pillows around myself without even noticing, presumably to keep the ghosts of dead children and Donkey Ladies away. When you find yourself scooting nearer and nearer to Jon for safety, you should really have the sense to take stock of the situation, but instead, I turned into the same terrified 10 year old who couldn’t sleep at night but still insisted on watching Poltergeist II every single day at my best friend Stephanie’s house. (If you want to terrify me to this day, sing that God is iiiiiiiiiiiin/his holy temmmmmmmple song into my ear. At your own risk. The 10 year old Sarah didn’t have this mean right hook. Or fingernails. Or tire iron.)

At one point Brian, bless his heart, even stopped the conversation to ask me if I really wanted them to go on, because evidently I had eyes the size of saucers and my hands were hovering over my ears, to which I naturally yelled, “No, no, more!”

I eventually had to be soothed with multiple viewings of The #1 Summer Jam of 2002, and although Mat and I had decided to sleep at the Byrnes’, I sucked it up and drove myself home. But I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t think of those little dead kids’ handprints all over my car when I parked, and didn’t run up my front steps without looking back.

P.S. We should totally go camping!