I woke to a loud rumble. I don’t know what time it was, because our clock is so bright we keep it covered with a piece of thick cloth. You know how it is, you wake in the night and stare at the clock so you stress about how long you have til it’s time to get up, and you can’t get back to sleep because you are stressing about it, rinse, lather, repeat.

Anyway, this loud rumbling. My first thought was that we had just had and earthquake, you know, the kind that roll, and the sound was the sound of the earthquake rolling southward. Must have been up in LA or something. Then I thought, no, maybe it’s a train going too fast. Sometimes the trains leaving the Port of Long Beach, with all the goods of the country on them, can be heard when the wind is right. Then, no, maybe it was a big truck barreling away from my street. What is that?

I opened the curtain and could see my whole backyard as if it were daylight, the sky was clear and the moon bright overhead. I left the curtain open a bit because the air felt nice and cool after such a hot-and-humid day. I started to drift off again, and a flash through my eyelids caught me. Huh? Is there some kind of freak out in my backyard taking pictures through the little triangle of curtain that is exposing my sleeping face to the yard? I reached for my glasses, and a little startled, I peer out of the triangle of exposed window, ready to scream if I saw someone.

There was nothing out there, but then I heard a little rumble again. What is that?? I start to fall asleep again, and there’s another flash, and a rumble right away this time. Then it comes, the most incredible dumping of rainwater just started falling all at once, as if someone slashed the bottom of a giant ziplock of water over the backyard. It was raining so hard, and the air smelled suddenly clean and fresh, and I didn’t even mind the temporary increase in humidity.

And I do mean temporary, as it was over as soon as it started. I don’t think it rained for more than 15 minutes over my backyard. I must live on some strange climate-cusp, because more often than not, when we experience these torrential rain pours, they occur only in the backyard, but if we look out the front windows, we can see that it’s just spitting or not raining at all in the front of our house. I didn’t bother to check this morning, since it was all over so fast, but I was glad that there wasn’t some pervert snapping photos of my through my bedroom window. Somehow my husband slept through the whole thing.

The things the mind comes up with when interrupted from a good sleep…