the twilight zone

do you know what it's like to be in the twilight zone?

I DO.

so, tonight, i'm walking home from work and i'm completely maxed out. a co-worker was sick and couldn't be at work tonight so i had to hold down the fort by myself which got pretty stressful. i survived, but all i wanted to do when i got home was soak in the tub. after stopping at the supermarket and renting "baby mama" from redbox (which came out on dvd yesterday), i finally get to my place, turn the key, and walk inside.

the living room is empty.

now, my roomate and i had arranged for our place to be exterminated today in order to combat the unfortunate bug/creature infestation (you don't want to know what i've found in there...). so i figure, hmm. the exterminators must have emptied out the living room in order to do the best exterminating job they can. i walk into the kitchen...

the kitchen is completely empty.

there are dead bugs everywhere, though. so i think to myself, great! they've done a great job exterminating and now the bugs are dying. woot. but was it necessary to move absolutely everything out of the kitchen? i mean, my supply of food, that i had been planning on eating tonight, is gone...

i decide to check out the situation in our rooms upstairs. i get to my room...

my room is completely EMPTY.

okay, i'm thinking, this is a bit much. what would warrant the exterminators to remove every single object from my room? my bed is gone. what am i going to sleep on?!

my roomate's room is completely empty as well.

this is so weird, i'm thinking. they must have found something harmful that made them absolutely HAVE to remove every single object from our apartment. asbestos? oh dear. so if they found something menacing, that's all fine and dandy, but WHERE did they put all of my stuff and WHY has no one notified me??

i go outside and dial my roomate's number on my cell phone. couldn't she have called me to let me know what was up?! i start freakin out a little bit. how am i gonna have my soak in the tub/relaxation session when my clothes are nowhere in sight, my towel, and everything i need is MISSING. i start making plans to call a friend afterwards and ask if i can stay at their place for the night until i figure out what's going on.

while my roomate's cell is ringing, i quickly glance at the apartment number of my place.

it's not my apartment.

turns out i had entered the apartment a couple of doors down from mine. BUT since there is no one living in this apartment at the moment, the door was unlocked, which is why i was able to get in with my key. the fact that there is no one living in it explains why it was completely empty.

the kicker was that this place was a CARBON COPY of my place, with absolutely NO differences in structure or design. since it looked exactly like my apartment, minus the absence of all of our stuff, i never questioned the fact that it was mine.

if someone had been living in there, the door would have been locked, my key would not have worked, at which point, i would have thought to myself, "why isn't my key working?" and which point i would have looked up at the apartment number and realized that it was not mine.

but the circumstances led me to believe for several minutes that it indeed was my place and to imagine all kinds of scenarios as to why absolutely everything had been removed.

once i realized my mistake, i walked a total of 5 feet to my apartment and realized that everything was intact. PHEW. but i'm telling you, that was a bizarre experience...

how did i manage to walk into the wrong apartment, you ask? am i little slow on the uptake, you wonder? i dunno. like i said, i was maxed out...

once i got to my actual place, i threw together a few ingredients in order to create a late meal, and it turned out to be a lovely number that i decided to call "susie's turkey and chunky tomato salad." i'm still amazed at the amount of creative freedom one can find in preparing meals.

so there ya have it. i'm out of the twilight zone, but i'm also beat. off to bed. nightynight!