Surprise

I got quite the surprise last night, and the way that happened is as follows. 

Just before I went to bed, I’d been watching YouTube videos of that Tchaikovsky piece— you know, the one with the cannons.  I’d found one that was filmed somewhere in Spain, and they were using real cannons -- and those cannons were loud, even over my phone. And real bell towers, too, not just sound effects.  I watched that one and a few more, then went to bed and dreamed of cannons firing.

In my dream, one of those cannons was so loud, it woke me up, and when the next one fired, that’s when I realized those weren’t cannons.

It was thunder. 

That second thunderclap was so loud, it sounded like it was right over the house. Almost immediately, the power went off. 

I opened my Entergy app and checked the outage map. Sure enough my street was the only one without electricity. I reported the outage, then went into the other room to get the right kind of cable to hook my phone up to my power bank so it could finish charging.  

Now, before I continue, I have to give you a little set up to what happens next.  I don't normally allow the cat to sleep in my room with me.  If she would lay in the bed and sleep, it would be fine, but she doesn't.  She roams all over the bed, jumps on then jumps off, claws the carpet, kneads on the blanket, walks across my head, and knocks all my stuff off of the night stand.  

However, since thunderstorms freak her out a bit, I took pity on her last night and let her into the bedroom.  Wonder of wonders, she jumped up onto the bed, lay down beside me, and started purring.  

For about ten minutes, after which she gets up, casually walks to the edge of the bed, and flips my phone off on to the floor.  Sigh...

No, no, no, I can't have this, I said, and put the cat out of the bedroom.  I got back into bed and amazingly enough, managed to drift off to sleep, even with no air conditioning.  Before I fell asleep, I made a mental note of where all my lanterns are, just in case I had to get dressed in the dark this morning. 

I didn't, though, because about 3:30, the electricity came back on, and I woke up grateful for the linemen who get up in the middle of the night to fix our power.  After work, I checked my email and found:  

Yeah, I thought that thunder sounded mighty close!

So the surprise was that none of my weather apps showed any chance of storms or severe weather.  None of the local meteorologists were predicting severe weather.  One even said it'd be good sleeping weather. 

But weather does what weather wants, and there's no predicting it.