A Road Less Travelled

A midquel to this post.

I can vouch for that particular night’s lack of sleep having nothing to do with sleeping on the treadmill. I must have fallen asleep just fine (on Gabrielle’s nice, soft, comfortable bed) because I was in a deep sleep for the first intrusion on that sleep. I slowly drifted toward an awareness of something, which my still sleeping mind finally identified as a sound. Yes, sound, that’s what that was called. I was nearly awake when my mind discovered what the sound was and began a slight panic. Panic, because the sound was unmistakably that of something trying to break through the door and eat us in our beds. (Or bed and treadmill, as the case may be.) With much growling and snorting and slavering it pounded at the door, trying to tear through it with rasping claws… That is until I completed the waking up process and realized that it was Kitty asking to be let out.

I gave up on panicking and turned my now mostly functioning mental processes to ignoring the dog and going back to sleep. About this point I noticed it was raining. I sleepily thought this was lovely. I like rain. Rain is… THUNDER! Okay, thunder’s okay too. Just kind of loud. Maybe if I just ignored it…

The air conditioner started making an odd buzzing noise, and Gabrielle started helpfully thumping it. About this point my mind discovered a small reserve of mild panic unused by the Attack of the Full Bladdered Dog, and realized that I had electronic devices plugged in during a thunderstorm. This was obviously bad. (I mean, look at what had just happened to the air conditioner!) I started rooting around for the cords by the side of the bed and unplugging them. One of them belonged to the charging cellphone, which deedle-eedle-oo’d as my (slightly late) contribution to the buzzing and thumping symphony.

Relieved at my responsible care for various electronic devices, I rolled over and went back to sleep. More or less. Somewhere in here there was more thunder and another attack on the door, but my mind had used up it’s extra reserves of panic, and was now just slightly annoyed to have so much going on in the middle of the night. I mean, didn’t they all realize it was time to stop panicking and go to sleep now?