What A Way

What a way to wake up!

But first, you need the backstory.  

Ever since I got this cat of mine, she's been staying outside at night....up until about two months ago, that is.  One night, out of the blue, I went to let her out before bed, and she wouldn't go.  Not only would she not go, she fought me.  I have a sneaking suspicion this had something to do with a vague shadow I saw one morning that looked quite a bit like a coyote.  Right in the road in front of the house.  

"OK," I said.  "You can stay in, but you have to be quiet!"  And she was.  All night long.  She did so well, I let her continue staying inside.   Funny, though, she very quickly figured out that the alarm going off meant she would soon be getting breakfast.   

Anyway, everything was going swimmingly until very recently, when she began to get more and more restless throughout the night.  Last night, she carried on so much, I finally got up and let her out just after midnight.  I went back to bed and quickly drifted off, only to be startled awake around 3:30 by a cat fight right outside my bedroom window.  

What a way to wake up!

I dashed to the back door and yelled at the cats, chasing the other one off.  It was the orange cat who'd had kittens in my woodpile last year.  I called and called to my cat, but she wouldn't come in.  I didn't go out into the yard -- I was in my draws after all -- and finally went back inside.  I laid down and dozed a bit, but never really went back to sleep.  Thus, I'm on my second night in a row running on very little sleep -- the previous night being kept awake by the storms.  

Speaking of storms, I have a coworker who is deathly afraid of them.  Naturally, the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was to ask her how she fared the other night.  "Guuuurl!" she said.  "I was so scared I couldn't move!"  I'm not joking.  She is seriously scared of storms.  One time, she got so scared, she went to the emergency room of her local hospital.  Not to seek medical attention, but to just sit in the waiting room until the storm passed.  She said she thought of doing that Saturday night, but she didn't.  

I always try to give her a heads up, but I had no idea those storms were going to be that bad.  

By the way, I learned a new term today:  equilux, because today was the equilux.  That means the sun rise and sun set were exactly 12 hours apart. 

Sometimes it's good to have so many meteorologists in your Facebook feed.