Saturday, I woke up in high humidity to a delightful spat of rain (good, hard rain that the midwest seems to be in short supply of and the brown of the grass shows it. ) Maybe a single roll of thunder. It was followed by a tornado alert on my phone and sirens in the neighborhood, though it didn't actually seem to be that windy or stormy outside my bedroom window. Last summer's tree-trashing Rogers Park tornado was pretty close (close enough to feel a pressure change in my ears) , so despite usually feeling safe in the city from twisters, I prepared to hunker down in my interior closet with the cats, but it was, thankfully, not necessary. I've seen the aftermath of some pretty serious microbursts (including a huge tent at the Printer's Row Book Fair lifted and moved several yards), but always feel a bit safer here among the solid brick structures than all that open space I grew up in. We spent many a night hiding in the basement under mattresses and watching the sky. There were years where my re-occurring disaster dreams always involved tornadoes, though this gave way more to plane crashes and floods as I got older.
However, I do love storms when they are not quite so deadly. I miss a lot of them when I'm working in the late afternoons due to a lack of windows in my workspace. There is a feeling of excitement when I see a bank of clouds rolling in over the city. That smell that settles in the first few seconds of rain. (I usually smell it before I see or feel it.) It's also amazing how the weather can be so different downtown and on the north side. I've left a deluge in the Loop and arrived to completely dry sidewalks near my apartment. Even the wind and temperature can be vastly different for just a few miles. The worse winds usually happen in the winter, when if from the right direction, they create a howling noise that can keep you awake with their intensity. So close to water, it can be difficult sometimes to walk east on certain streets if the wind is off the water, but it's also the regulator that keeps the lakefront neighborhoods cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter (unless it's frozen completely over pretty far out.)
While this week hasn't been blistering hot, it has been humid, which means I spend a lot of time turning the fans on and off and throwing the covers off/ pulling them back up. I don't sleep as well when it's like this with no A/C, and remember my dreams more (and have weirder ones) This week's highlight was having committed a random dude murder and gotten away with it, though fearing that eventually I'd be caught. It had some grisly details, including enlisting my sister to help chop up the body and burn it, then bury it in the woods. All less troubling than the crushing fear and dread of the police finding the remains and figuring it out. (Maybe, I've been listening to Taylor Swift's "No Body No Crime" too much..lol..) I also repeatedly dream of a vague realization of something I was supposed to be doing and keeping track of, but can't remember what it is that startles me awake sometimes. I even had a school dream in the past few weeks, about my locker being on a beach, and yet I am unable to remember the combination to open it. Somewhere, there is a key to what this all means in my subconscious, but it's all over the place.
Troubling dreams aside, I am feeling more organized and purposeful than usual--all no doubt related to working the shorter weeks and getting time to work on things that I had been neglecting. With a lessening of covid anxiety, I feel more creative and like I am just waking up after a long sleep. The past year was just a sort of head-down dullness with so much space occupied by worry. While it's entirely possible, due to variants, it will be short lived, I'll take it.
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