A re-post from April of 2012 and another of my blogs, now closed down, as we fondly remember our girl, Dolly.

Yesterday, at almost 2:30 AM, I was in my office rebooting the modem because we had no Internet.  No; there is no alarm on our system that goes off, waking me up, if the Internet goes down.  No; I have no sixth sense that nudges me from sleep if our connection to the rest of the planet dissolves… in fact I’d have been blissfully unaware of the networking failure were it not for some dog being stuck in non-stop barking mode.

It is warm enough now that we have gone back to sleeping with the bedroom windows open, so we hear more of what goes on outside at night. Marie is able to sleep through such disturbances – I am not. Dolly was trying to sleep and would occasionally go to the window to shout, “Would you PLEASE hush up!” then curl back into her snuggle bed in the corner with a grumble to try and get back to sleep. I am a light sleeper (or so I thought).  Once I am fully awake (for any reason) I will not get back to sleep; I might as well fire up the coffee pot and find something productive to do.

Marie heard me getting my slippers from the closet and said, “There is no internet – at least there wasn’t at 1:00.” I didn’t ask why she had been looking for Internet at 1:00.

I prepared a pot of coffee (ten cups this morning instead of the usual eight), exchanged slippers for shoes, snagged a flashlight and wandered across the lawn to my office to reboot the cable modem. This is becoming a daily chore – though not usually at 2:00.

Except for that fool, flapper-jawed dog in the distance it was a beautiful morning (as far as I could tell; it was pitch-black dark outside since clouds hid the moon). The air was rain-washed fresh, and cool. Crickets chirped, tree frogs trilled, bullfrogs harrumphed in the creek across the road. Very pleasant indeed.

Connection restored, I returned home and wrote a couple of articles.  I probably should have done this at my office, since that is where I’m supposed to work.  But at that hour it felt more proper to be in the same building as my loved ones; and because my laptop was at home.

The day dawned and I spent the hours working outside.  There was much to do.  I went to bed an hour early that evening; it had been a long day.

* * * * *

This morning I was wrenched from a deep sleep and an entertaining dream by a loud BOOOMMMMMmmmmm… I don’t remember what I was dreaming about but do remember feeling frustrated because I would not know how the story ended; some sort of mystery.

SIDENOTE:
Do credits roll at the end of your dreams?  They do in mine, quite often in fact.  I don’t recognize any of the names, but I wonder if that makes me odd somehow.

My first conscious thought was to consider the sound that had wrought destruction on my blissful slumber: had the explosives shack at the quarry near the interstate exploded?  Had an aircraft crashed?

Marie moved about in the darkness, flashlight in hand. “I can’t believe Dolly is still outside.”  She said softly.

“Did you hear that?” Perhaps I had imagined it.

“Oh, yes!”

“What do you think it was?”

“It’s thunder darling: it’s been thundering and lightning for some time now.”

“Oh.”  Feeling a little foolish.  So much for being a light sleeper.

That would explain her comment about Dolly.  Thunder scares the willies out of Dolly Dawg, she will hide in a closet if she can find one left open a little.  We sometimes make it a point to leave a door ajar when a thunderstorm looms.  She has to locate the shelter herself; if one is offered she thinks it a trick and refuses to go in.  “Maybe she thought no one was up and went to ground, hiding under a lumber pile or the loading dock.”

Marie went out on the front porch and called Dolly several times.  A few minutes passed and I heard the claw-clattering of a large dog gleefully bounding down the hallway toward the safety of her snuggle-bed.

Dolly pawed at her bed for a moment, than came to my side of the bed and bumped up against it.  That’s a signal.  I reached over and scratched her ears for a bit.  She finds that soothing.  When sated, she lay down and tucked her head under the edge of the bed, safe from the scary noises.

3:45 AM; I tried in vain to go back to sleep, but slumber evaded me.  Time to get up, start the coffee, and write something.  Here I sit, typing … I think I’ll try to take a nap this afternoon.