Stormy weather

We had storms on Friday night, but nothing too dramatic. The worst of the weather traveled south of us. Since I've seen two tornadoes in my lifetime already, that was quite OK with me. The weird part is that hours after the storms passed, our power went out. As near as I can figure (since the backup battery is worn out in my bedside clock), the power went out around 2 or 3 a.m. and it came back on about 6 a.m.

No problem, right? If the power is going to go out, at least it's not during the evening, when you might be forced to think of something to do besides watch TV, or during the daytime, when you might be tempted to repeatedly open your refrigerator, even though you know that that means your food will start going bad that much faster. Or during the morning, when you can't help wondering how long the outage will last and what effect this will have on your plans for the day.

The problem however was Allie. Specifically, the fact that long ago, Allie's daddy trained her that in order to sleep, she needs to have white noise. He's bought her two different sound machines, though she usually uses a fan instead. Well, the fan quit. And Allie woke up. And Allie couldn't get back to sleep. Period.

That should be the end of that story, right? Allie couldn't sleep, but hey, she's 9 years old. She should be able to lie awake in bed until she drops off again, right? Oh, no. She called for me and asked for some kind of night light. In the dark, I fumbled for one of Greg's lanterns that has a night light function and a flashlight function. And I stumbled back to bed and fell asleep.

Then she called for me and said she couldn't sleep without white noise and I had to do something. I told her I wasn't working for the local utility this week and that she just needed to deal with it. Then I stumbled back to bed and fell asleep.

Then she called for me and said she just couldn't sleep. She asked if I would help her get batteries for her latest sound machine. Where was Greg during this drama, you may ask? He was downstairs, either sitting outside on the porch or napping on the couch. So I told her to go downstairs and ask him to help her. She had a flashlight, after all. I told her not to call me again.

Believe it or not, I had actually fallen asleep again when she called me again. Of course, idiot that I am, I was out of bed and stumbling down the hall before I really was awake. This time, she was holding her garbage can and saying that she thought she needed to throw up. I got her up and into the bathroom and nothing happened. Eventually, I told her that I didn't think she had a stomach bug, just that she was full of nerves from not sleeping. I made her get back into bed, gave her the warning-of-death, and went back to bed.

And that was the last time she called for me, though the power outage lasted another couple of hours. And now I'll refrain from telling you the story of how she's afraid now to ride her bike because she doesn't want to fall off and break another bone. It's hell raising an emotional child.