I don't know if other people even think about the End-Of-The-World but it's one of my top ten worries...along with becoming a bag lady and living in a cardboard box under a bridge with bad teeth and mismatched shoes.
When I can't reach a "Good Christian" person on the phone I immediately think I've been left behind and all kinds of crazy worries go through my head.
I'm pretty sure this isn't normal.
Anyway, the night before last, my fine puppy,Winter and I went to bed early and were woken up (I looked "woken up" up... now I'm even more confused..."Winter and I were awakened" sounds a bit pompous so "woken up" is staying) by an enormous amount of light shining in the apartment.
I just knew this was IT.
(I'm not sure God will smile kindly on me if I greet him with a bad word....which is what I did)
I bumbled to the window and saw six HUGE stadium light thingys, each with four, bigger-than-life lights, shining in on me from the railroad tracks...what the #$%*?
Still somewhat asleep and a little worried it might, in fact, be God (although, slightly confused as to why He was using stadium lights to announce his coming....I thought there were suppose to be trumpets and blood on the moon and headless horsemen and nazguls..).
In a sort of blinded-by-the-light sleepy daze, I leashed up Winter and went out to investigate....
Because this is what one does when faced with a possible End-Of-The-World situation....
go meet your maker...
with your puppy.....
in your pajamas...
without your glasses.
The road was blocked with no-parking cones, the town was lit from all the wrong angles, there was an eerie mist (could have been my myopic vision) and the lights well, they were horrific...
They buzzed.
There were a lot of official looking men in hard hats and vests milling about....one of them, with a Dunkin Donut coffee cup (most likely not an angel...but I've heard one can be caught unawares) asked if I needed help.....I'm sure I looked in need of help, what with my stylish bed head, squinnty eyes, confused puppy and inside out sweater covered pajamas.
I asked the obvious, "Is this a dream?"
He looked alarmed and assured me I was awake.
I asked if the lights were permanent.
"Nope, just for an hour"....
Winter and I headed home.
To play ball....
in the brightly lit hallway.....
For an hour.
An hour and a half later trains were added to the lights...loud, screeching, clanging trains....from 1:30 AM until 5:55 AM...trains from both directions...it did no good to look out the windows...the lights were beyond blinding (here in Dillsboro the arrival of the train is an occasion...we have one tourist train every couple days....it's a quiet affair, involving confused tourists looking for bathrooms, chocolate, a bar perhaps...... a misplaced phone).
It was a very unsettling night.
To top off the surreal feeling of the whole event...no one knew anything about it the next morning.
Annie humored me and walked around the tracks with Winter and me looking for clues.
Just an empty Dunkin Donut coffee cup on the tracks...nothing else.
I was beginning to think God was trying to tell me something in a dream...or, more likely, I might need to send myself off somewhere for more substantial help...more mainstream than Eckhart Tolle perhaps.
Rather than admit insanity I decided to convince myself I had dreamed the whole thing...
only, I was SO tired...
and there was that coffee cup.....
Then we ran into Janet and John, from the wine shop.
Top Gear was filming night train wrecks (?).
Well, of course, silly me.....
They just forgot to let the few of us that live here in town (one street...tiny, tiny town) know this was going to happen.
Here's what I learned...
keep my glasses near the bed...
buy new pajamas...
perhaps, read Revelations...
practice saying, "Well, hello there God." when awakened (yep, used it there) unexpectedly...
....just in case
Here's what Winter learned....
play ball in the hall from 12:00-1:00!
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