Rockin’ and Rollin’

It was a dark and stormy night …

That’s probably an understatement. Storms nearly shook me out of bed, not once, but twice, between 3 and 5 this morning.

I could hear Ozzie growling first and then launching into a full bark as the first round of storms hit. Lightning lit up the room and thunder shook the walls, at one point, so hard that I thought the suncatcher in my window was going to come loose! I hit the light on the alarm clock. 3:16.
I padded into the livingroom where the mother, who was sick yesterday, was up watching TV.

“Bad storm,” she said and then flipped on the cable station that carries non-stop radar. Really? I hadn’t noticed. *rolls eyes*

The radar showed a healthy red and yellow band fanning out from west of St. Louis well into Illinois. At that moment, a very red cell was right on top of us. My brain had just processed that bit of information when the rain began to hammer the roof. I prayed there was no hail.

I didn’t see any little purple/pink patches within those cells, so that was good news.

I sat up for another 20 minutes, until the worst appeared to pass but knowing that more was coming. Sure enough, I had no sooner gone back to sleep than the scene from an hour before practically replayed itself. 4:10.

I rejoined the mother and a terrified Ozzie scaled the loveseat, nestling into my leg. I sat up until about 4:50 when it seemed to turn to just heavy rain. I plopped the O-man at the end of the bed, figuring he was less likely to growl or bark at the thunder if he could huddle at my side. The alarm was going off before I knew it.

The lucky part is that this isn’t a day where I really needed to be in with the chickens like yesterday and Monday. The world won’t end because I get there an hour later. (Which is still nearly an hour earlier than the vast majority, even then.)

The unlucky part is that I’d planned to spend that extra hour sleeping. So much for that plan.