This morning I awoke to find a stranger on my couch.  At first, I thought it was one of my children wrapped in a blanket but then I realized two things: they had gone to their own beds before me the previous night, and both had red hair--quite different from the blond highlights peeking out of the top of the blanket. The dog, sleeping on the floor beneath the body, was unconcerned and wagged her tail affectionately at me as I let her outside. Huh.

I peered at the body. Female. Blond hair. The ripped knee of a pair of jeans declared itself from the edge of the blanket. I went down a mental list of known blond hair acquaintances who might have business entering my house and sleeping on my couch unannounced.  All reside in another state. I looked again, closer. Nope. No clue. Huh.

Returning to the bedroom, I nudge my husband.  "There is a stranger sleeping on our couch," I say.  He leaps up. "What?" I repeat myself.
"Male or female?" he asks, alarmed, pulling on a t-shirt and jeans.
"Female," I reply.
"Really?"
"I can't make this up."

We walk down the hall into the living room.  She's still there, curled up and content like Goldilocks must have been in the just right bed. He peers at her with interest, then looks at me. Wonderment. "What the hell?" he whispers.  I shrug and shake my head.

We take a collective minute to stare at her.
"What do we do?" still whispering. I shrug and shake my head.

A quick survey shows no shoes, no coat, no open doors. Just a literal Goldilocks on our couch.

I wake my son from his basement slumber.  "Don't want to judge or anything, but do you know why there is a blond girl sleeping on the couch upstairs?"

Wide-eyed, he replied, "She was in here last night! She was wandering through the basement and came into my room.  I told her to get the hell out!"

"Okay.... and?"

"I walked her upstairs and put her out the door."

"And then you went back to bed?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Well, what was I supposed to do?"

An obvious list of supposed to dos immediately entered my head. Later, I think to myself. Goldilocks first.

"She said something about R*?" he adds. " She seemed really drunk. Maybe she's in the wrong house?"

I relay the information to my husband. Not wanting to disturb our guest, he grabs the phone and goes into the garage to call the neighbor.  A minute later, he returns laughing, shaking his head. "R* will be over in a minute."

True to his word, a moment later the soon-to-be college graduate humbly knocks on the front door to claim his friend. Thirty seconds later, sock-footed Goldilocks and the neighbor were gone. Grateful she found a safe landing and suffered no harm in her wanderings, we were left with laughter and several questions, mainly: What the hell?

How in the hell did a stranger get into my house not once but twice without us hearing her?  Why in the hell did my 16 year old son not wake us when a stranger was found in our house. How in the hell did he just go back to sleep after discovering said stranger? How in the hell are you so drunk (or whatever) that you can ambulate well enough around (closing doors behind you) but not know where you are or belong? But the biggest, and I mean biggest question is this: How the Hell does a stranger come wandering into and around your house at 2 am and your faithful dog NOT MAKE A SOUND?  Why the hell does my dog come UNHINGED when the big brown UPS truck stops by the driveway but remain silent when a stranger enters my home in the middle of the night, preferring instead to curl up next to her?

As of today, the dog, the seven-year-old toe-breaking wiggle-butting Border Collie we call Jett (commonly known as DD or Dork Dog (for obvious reasons once met) has acquired a new name: WD for Worthless Dog...or maybe it should more specifically be WWD for Worthless WatchDog.

And we're going to start locking our doors.