Bright Nights

I went to bed at 11:00 last night. Bone tired. Exhausted. I woke up at 12:30, and didn't go back to sleep until around 2:00. Anxiety? Hunger? No - lightning. We had a wild thunder and lightning storm last night. At 12:34 I awoke in my extremely bright room. It looked like daylight. Once I fully awoke, I realized it was just extremely bright lightning lighting up the house like a firecracker. I kept wondering if there was a mad scientist just outside my room, practicing something with electricity. We have thick, dark, velvet curtains in our room to block out the light from the sliding glass door. It's not easy to make our room look bright in the middle of the night! The thunder was so incredibly hard and loud that it temporarily knocked out all the power on the street, and set off a lot of car alarms. Lightning struck a house a few miles away from here and set the roof on fire. I went upstairs in a dark house awash with white light to check on the kids to make sure that the thunder hadn't woken them up. Thunder woke Caitlin up from her nap earlier in the day, and it wasn't nearly as strong as this storm. Thankfully, both kids were still sleeping.

Being the California girl that I am, lightning is still fascinating to me. I opened the front door, and sat on the inside stairs, watching the storm through the storm door. The lightning was so intense and bright that I didn't want to get to close to the door, or even turn on the TV to check the weather. I've never seen multiple streaks of lightning at the same time, and I've never seen it so bright. Rain and hail poured from the sky, and our entire street was a gushing river. One would have gotten drenched just stepping outside for a moment. It was impossible to go back to sleep until the storm had passed, as the thunder shook the house for an hour and half. Even thought the storm had passed over my street, the lightning was so bright for a few more hours that I wore my eye mask so the light wouldn't keep me awake. I thought the storm was intense. I also realized I could be over exaggerating, since I'm a non-midwesterner, and haven't spent the better part of my life seeing these kinds of storms. I felt validated this morning when I dropped Brandon off at preschool, and heard other moms and teachers talking about how crazy the storm was last night, and how their kids woke up screaming. I'm so tired today from my lack of sleep last night, but I'm grateful that my kids were tired enough to sleep thought it.

I've seen more lighting, and heard more thunder in the three months that I've lived here than in all my years in California. I love the big clouds, and I love the crazy weather. Although the last few days here haven't been bad (yesterday reached a whopping 73, today was only 82), the heat this summer has been a little maddening. But fall and winter will be here eventually. I'm looking forward to the colder weather. Hot weather does that to me. The nice thing about having a cold winter will be that I will actually look forward to summer! Seasons! What a concept! I can hardly wait!