It's Raining, It's Pouring, and not a creature was stirring

Okay - so the heavens broke open over our corner of the desert last night soaking the lawns and making a muddy red mess of any patch of dirt!  It was wonderful... I lay in bed listening to the pitter pat of the rain on the roof while Q ran and brought in the mattress from the back porch (it was airing out - too long in storage), checked that his car windows were closed, and cranked the umbrella closed on the picnic table... actually I did get up and close the windows of the house - but I didn't run outside for anything.

Now, the pitter pat was a lovely sound - but that lightning and THUNDER was amazing... loud enough to shake the house... I kept expecting little feet to come running into our room - but all of our children sleep like the dead.  Is this a good thing?  

I am reminded of a time (about 6 years ago) when I was suffering from a DOOZY of a headache and because I have a wonderful hubby Q had volunteered to run to the grocery store for the essentials after putting the kids to bed.  By "doozy" of a headache I am saying the type where I would rather be in a closed up dark room with NO sound...  I won't call it a migraine because I have good friends who are hospitalized by migraine headaches, and no - it wasn't THAT bad... but I REALLY needed a break!  Well, Q's off at the store, the 4 kids were all sleeping (even the baby) and I decided that it would be a great time to get a quick hot shower in while Q was gone... (he really hates the foggy bathroom)  So, I jump in the shower and turn it all the way to the hot side...  it felt great - for about 4 minutes, at which point I heard a "chirp"...  which turned out to be the smoke detector...  how do I know for sure?  because less than a minute later the alarms start pealing... loudly.  Wrapped in a towel, my hair dripping wet I run up and down the stairs looking for the source of the alarm - because there's nothing cooking, no smoke in the house - there's nothing downstairs except 2 sleeping boys... so I start trying to de-activate the smoke detectors.  I should mention here that I have never reached 5 feet tall... close, just shy of the mark... so in order to reach any of the smoke detectors I am dragging around chairs.  By this time I have shut off the shower, thrown on a robe, and wrapped my hair in a towel.  Because we'd just moved into this house that month I didn't know a few things - #1 - there are about 20 smoke detectors in this house, and #2 - they are directly hooked into the electricity of the house and do not rely on batteries alone, meaning of course that they are linked and if one of them goes off - they ALL go off, upstairs and down.  And meaning that even if you get on a chair and wrench the idiotic thing off the wall (yes, breaking it a little in the process) and remove the batteries - it will CONTINUE to BEEP!!!  

I finally just opened all the doors to the house, turned on the ceiling fans, wrapped myself in a blanket and lay down on the couch to cry...  The alarms finally did turn off - just in time for Q to come home and wonder why his wife was a complete wreck...  at least he remembered to pick up the Ibuprofen :)

So, why all this reminiscence?  My kids NEVER woke up - Fire Alarms don't phase them, Thunder is like a lullaby and that alarms that is supposed to get T up for school each morning so that he can get ready and off to school WITHOUT begging mom for a ride... yeah, we got the most obnoxious alarm we could find, and it STILL doesn't always work.

So me, I'm just praying for no REAL disasters to befall our household - the kids'll sleep right through 'em!