Nightmares or . . .

Sometimes it's hard to tell where the nightmares begin and life ends, or vice versa.

Last night the fire alarm in our building went off around 2 AM. At first I thought, I don't smell smoke, I'm not getting up. Then I woke up enough to realize that, "The fire alarm's going off!"

I jumped out of bed. Forgot all about my plans of what I'd take with me if there was ever a disaster and looked for Annabel. She was nowhere to be seen, so I put on my coat and rushed out with only my coat.

My neighbor was out there holding his little shih-tzu and looking shell shocked. It seems that even though he has no handicaps, his apartment is set up for a person with any sort of disabilities. He and his dog were suddenly assaulted by strobe lights and insane noise. He didn't even have a coat with him. After it became obvious the building was not going to burst into flames, I held his dog while he ran back in and got his coat and hat.

Two fire trucks came blaring out after what seemed like ages. The firemen ran through the building then tried to turn off the alarm. When they could not do that, they went through the building again. In the meantime I noticed two ambulance vans had pulled up nearby. (Maybe to pick up the people dying from shock and cold?) But after 25 minutes they announced we could go back inside.

I went back to sleep amazingly quickly once I got warm then at five o'clock our power went out! I reset the clocks and went back to sleep again. I got up around eight, washed and cut strawberries and blueberries and put together a big fruit salad with all the bells and whistles for our book club brunch and just as I finished, saw the email that said our hostess had the flu! It was cancelled.

I decided to make breakfast before meeting my daughter, but as I began to cook the power went out again! And I have an electric stove.

Eventually I did eat and met my daughter, who took the fruit salad for her and my granddaughter. We spent a fun four hours together, but there was a long period there where I wasn't sure if I was having one long extended nightmare, or just an unusual spate of bad luck.