Saturday, July 16, 2005

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

The remnants of Hurricane Dennis have given us thunderstorms every day for the last six days. I was at work every day but yesterday so I finally got a front-row seat. I like thunderstorms but Phoebe does not. She wants to see what's going on but the crashes frighten her. I sat on the back steps until the sheets of driven rain pushed me back to just inside the doorway. Even there I was getting misted. The storm must have lasted 45 minutes as the lightning got closer and closer. If you count the seconds between the time you see the flash to the time you hear the crash there's a formula that'll tell you how far away it is. If you see and hear at the same time you're at the point of impact. Yesterday the noise was so loud my heart stopped. The impact was so fast I couldn't even flinch. The storm passed but about 9pm the power went out all over the neighborhood. Today I found more than 29,000 people were affected. Things are so dark and so quiet. Phoebe doesn't like thunder and she didn't know what to do about the black hole that our house became. She's uncomfortable around flashlights. I wasn't sure it would be safe to walk around the neighborhood in the dark so after enjoying the darkness for about 30 minutes I thought I'd take a short nap. It was at least 6 hours before my normal bedtime but I'm tired from extra hours at work. Phoebe jumped on the bed with me and snuggled up next to me and went to sleep. This is totally out of character for her. I guess she was a little freaked out. It was nice having my puppy there, though. We napped for about an hour and then we got up and I lit a candle. It was getting really stuffy inside the house even with the window open. The rain had cooled the temperature by 20 or 30 degrees but had left that oppressive humidity behind. The moon had risen; it was almost half full so it was quite a bit lighter outside, so we sat out there again. About 11:30 the power came on again.
Now I had light again I finished reading this book. It went really fast & I liked reading it. It's sort of a murder mystery narrated by the protagonist, an autistic fifteen-year-old. The character is a genius at math and at solving puzzles but finds it extremely difficult to live around people. I identify with characters like that.

1 comment:

Wastedpapiers said...

Hazel, my partner, read this book and enjoyed it but I found it hard to get into and so never finished it. Mind you, I have a lot of trouble reading novels these days. I prefer biographies and short stories that you can dip into anytime.