It's nearly 3:30am...

I went to bed last night around 10, after having passed out cold on the couch sometime before that... this happens on Friday nights.

But it's now nearly 3:30am, and I was woken from a really bizarre dream where I was in a car- and a slightly grown up version of one of my students was driving- we were driving from Grand Rapids (Michigan) back to Kalamazoo- but along the way, on the highway, we kept driving past high schoolers in states of random undress playing in the puddles on the highway- and by the way, the ones that were dressed, were clearly in their Prom best. I tried to get out my cell phone to call 911 and report that there were people playing on the highway, that we kept nearly hitting- but the driver had the radio on so loud, that I could not hear anything. All the buttons in the car were in totally random places, and I kept searching for the button to turn it down...and yelling at the kid driving that I couldn't hear. Then I heard the lady on the phone (the 911 lady) say, "I've been waiting for you to talk for like 2 minutes now..." and I proceeded to get in a fight with her over the fact that she should have said something LOUDLY when she picked up. Then, the kid takes an offramp, and suddenly, it's not night-time anymore like it was on the highway, and we're zooming through this little town, and she's driving WAY TOO FAST and she takes a turn that goes by an old (but still functioning) church and then it was a dead end, the end of the street blocked by big pillars, to cut this road off from being a throughway- and my student, she's like, "Let's just see if we can squeeze through here..." Of course we could not, so with reckless abandon she throws it into reverse and we back back down the street, and as we drive by backwards I see the pastor (who in my dream happened to look like a Latvian politician whose kids used to go to my old school) and some of his parishioners coming out of the church.

Then I woke up, because still, it was so LOUD. I sat up in bed, thinking, "What the hell? I'm not dreaming anymore! Why is it so loud?" We sleep with the air conditioner on, so we're used to that relatively "white" noise in the night- but this was something different. I got up out of bed, and went to the window, and realized that it is raining so hard that the sound is not of raindrops, but just the dull roar of sheets of rain coming down. I just opened the door to see how loud it sounded outside, and realize that our roof must amplify the sound. I don't know what it's made of, but, um, clearly, not a rain friendly material. There are occasional flashes of lighting, and I heard one boom of rolling thunder... but mostly, from inside here, it sounds like a fan is turned on high and blowing in your face- like the AC is up and making a lot of noise. It's really loud white noise.

But, it's funny because the sound is so dull- I want to it to separate- I want to hear the little raindrops... but I suppose, that won't for a while. In the 25 minutes it's taken me to distractedly get this down, the rain hasn't eased up at all. I wonder how long it will last. Ah well... I'll go back and listen from bed...