If you came here looking for this week’s Wordless Wednesday post, it’s here.

It’s a bit before six in the morning, and I should be sleeping. In fact, I was tired before one, but lingered online until Fuzzy came to bed around two, chatting with a friend. It’s been raining – a slow, gentle, soaking rain – pretty much constantly since about five yesterday afternoon, and since the temperature was in the mid seventies, I actually turned off the a/c, opened up the house, and let in the moist air and the sizzling sound of the rain falling into the pool, combined with the thicker, wetter sound of raindrops against leaves, cement, and wood.

We slept under fresh-from-the-dryer sheets until Zorro woke me up around four, asking to go out. It was still raining, and he doesn’t like to get his feet wet, but I knew if he had to pee badly enough, he’d deal with the wet. Apparently, this wasn’t a bladder emergency, because I tossed him gently outside, closed the door so he wouldn’t bolt right back in, and proceeded to watch him stare pointedly at the point where the sliding door meets the wall for five minutes, in that very focused chihuahua way of his.

I gave up, and let him back in, rubbed him down with a towel, and told him he was an impossible little dog, but I loved him anyway. I don’t know if he understands the words – dogs, like people, are capable of selective listening, and will respond to ‘treat’ and ‘walk’ in the same day they pretend not to understand the word ‘no.’

Walking back to the bedroom, I decided the house was stuffy, so I clicked the a/c back on. (Amazingly, our electric bill for August, the hottest month of 2007, so far, was almost $100 lower than usual. Because of this, I do not feel guilty about having the a/c set to my version of cool, instead of Fuzzy’s, though lately I’ve been really sensitive to cold. I wonder if that’s an unwritten side effect of alli.) I closed the bedroom window, took my own elimination break, and then crawled into bed.

At that point I realized there was actual thunder and lighting outside – of the sort that is not at all ominous, but rather like the weather is murmuring comforting thoughts. “Let your creativity shine,” the lightning says, in pale flickers, and the thunder adds, “and don’t worry so much if about what people like. Write what you like.” In my head, Michael “Worf” Dorn is the voice of the thunder.

I like to watch and listen to storms, and I was kind of awake at that point, and hungry, so I’ve been sitting up in bed since then, visiting Wordless Wednesday participants, and trying to use words and water to kill the hungry feeling, so I can snatch a couple more hours of sleep.

And on that note, I shall close the lid on the computer, snuggle up with Fuzzy, Zorro, and Miss Cleo, and see if there might not be time for another dream or two before I have to get up for real.