Apparently there was a storm in our fair city last night. News to me. After finally winning the battle of the going to sleep thing.
The past few nights have roughly been the same old, same old.
Left side of brain, “Ok, time to go to sleep.”
Right side of brain, “Excuse me?”
Left side of brain, “Sleep, you know that thing where we stop talking for a while?”
Right side of brain, “Um, no, sorry don’t have clue what you’re talking about.”
Left side of the brain, “Look, she can’t be thinking about the family, the house, writing, taking photos and where to take photos all the time, she’ll snap.”
Right side of the brain, “How do I put this? Time to catch up!”
Left side of the brain, “Very funny, now shut up and go to sleep.”
Right side of the brain, “Why?”
Anyway you get the idea. The past week has been the battle of not being awake. About the only difference in the sleep deprivation between me and a new mother is the absence of a screaming, hungry, poo factory in the dark hours before sunrise. What is the cause of this sudden zombie like attitude to my sleep cycle? You guess is as good as mine. Started a couple of weeks ago when in spite of quite full and frantic day, by the time it was the hour to take to the sheets, I was feeling more like it was about forty five minutes after my second coffee of the day, which is to say roughly my peak. After that it is downhill at varying rates depending on the back, the brain, and other assorted fun life things happening at the time.
So last night the body finally had a small win and I got some sleep, and promptly missed what was according to the daughter the coming of the second flood involving things like Arks, and people running around naked screaming about the end of the world as we know it. Bugger. I like a good storm. Nothing quite like Mother Nature with a good dose PMS to get the blood pumping.
Goes back to my childhood, when my parents would go camping at the drop of a hat. We had a talent back then. A gift you might call it. Every time my family pitched the tent you could bet grandma the heavens would open in a attempt to see us washed out to sea. Even if we did happen to be about a hundred miles inland at the time. There is a certain sense of triumph you feel when re-assembling a camp site after a storm, and seeing the local boys in blue come belting down the track, convinced of your grisly ending, seeing as roofs where ripped off houses in the township during said gully rusher, only to find you throwing a towel over a soaked deck chair and seeing to the most important post storm chore, the brewing of a cuppa. It got to be such a regular event, that when the rain got a bit thin, the neighbours would offer to do house and pet sitting for us so we could go and pitch a tent somewhere to water the yards and refill the local dams.
There is nothing quite like sitting under a tarp while nature is doing the wild thing to kill any fears of wet weather, something that has stayed with me since.
Now with our dams all but filled, and the weather boffins making yet another ‘prediction’ about ocean temperatures in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the similarities to that rather soggy year of 1974, you can understand my, shall we say reservation, when the husband announced last night, “This summer we should go camping somewhere.”
That wonderful thing called experience is saying to me,
“That would not end well”
