Every smoke alarm in my house went off at 1am last night. Then 3am. Then again at 5am. No smoke, no dead batteries, just late night wailing for no reason. After the third time, I thought I might’ve been losing it. What if the house was filled with smoke and I just didn’t notice? What if it was burning down around me?
It was fine, of course, but I was – still am – exhausted. It’s hard to sleep in my house sometimes, even when it’s not pretending it’s on fire. There’s a window directly above my bed and the moon’s too bright (weird problem!). Two raccoons show up every night and the fat one torments the slightly-less-fat one until it runs laps across the deck, squealing like a terrible little piglet.
I thought living in the middle of nowhere would be perfect. No more neighbor singing “Little Red Corvette” at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night. No more of these notes showing up in my backyard:
But no. The animals and the horrible moon and all that.
…but also:
No streetlights and the wide-open sky.