okay so a couple of nights ago this thunderstorm woke me up around 4am and freaked me the fuck out.
4am, sitting up through a thunderstorm, afraid of my hillside going up in wildfire. realizing i am NOT emergency prepared. if i had to leave…put on pants, grab laptop-phone-purse-keys. how would i get the cat? could i shove him into his carrier or would he sense my fear and run and hide? // do my smoke alarms even work? i haven’t tested them. i haven’t gotten renter’s insurance yet. // am radio is talking about afghanistan, that’s a good sign, right? power still on. no emergency sirens. // first drops of rain since i moved here almost three months ago. bang of thunder that shakes the house and sets off car alarms down the hill.
now, admittedly i have a tendency to be easily disoriented/frightened when i’m really groggy, but it was also a HUGE FUCKING STORM. i’ve lived in the bay area a total of five years now (4 college, .7 post-college, .3 since i moved here this past june) and have only witnessed two thunderstorms. they just don’t happen. so i layed awake for more than an hour listening to the storm and fretting about how dry the hillside i live on is (later that night the first drops of rain fell…i’d been here almost three months, and no rain. how does anything green stay alive? ). Gene sent me the link to this photo later in the week and wow. okay, see? it WAS a huge scary storm.
the best thing about waking to a thunderstorm is burrowing deeper into the arms of a lover. waking alone, it underscores the loneliness sharply.