It's four a.m....

BOOM!

I go from REM to out of bed and wide awake in two seconds, flat. It takes me at least twice as long to realize that the sound was not caused by something exploding inside my house, but by thunder. Very near, very loud thunder. An explicative slips from my mouth. I wait.

Silence.

Silence.

And suddenly.

A deluge.

I've never heard rain like this before. It doesn't even sound like individual raindrops falling on my sunroof. It sounds like someone emptied a freaking ocean onto my house. I get up, go to the living room, open my laptop, check the weather report.

It says it's raining.

I go back to my room, turn on the air conditioner, and lie back down in bed, listening to the rain. It goes on for another minute or two, then, suddenly, softens to a light drizzle, and I fall back to sleep.