True Story.

Two nights ago, I was sleeping in my nice warm bed. I say warm, because I have: two duvets, a cover and a sheet. My room regularaly hovers around 9 degrees celcius at night, and 11 during the day. Think 45 fahrenheit, with wind chill factor dropping it to 29. I have also pack a tshirt, hooded sweatshirt, pj pants and sweats. If it's extra cold I even think about wearing a pair of socks. Usually it's just thinking though. I haven't worn a hat yet, but I am growing my hair out hoping it will prevent frostbite on the ear that doesn't get to snuggle up to the pillow. It's a shame that only one ear gets to do that, the other is always getting a raw deal. What it comes down to is that with these Spanish houses, they just aren't built to retain any trace of heat.

But I'm getting sidetracked, back to me being all nice and warm, sound asleep in bed. All of that is happening when I wake up to this obnoxious rattling. I roll over and look towards my desk where I am sat now, but I don't see anything. Then I put my glasses on and that seems to help. By that time however, the rattling has stopped. I check the time, thinking that it really was rude for rattling to be going on at 2 something am. I go back to sleep.

I then begin dreaming that horrible things are happening in the city of Badajoz, where I live. Tall blocks of apartments/flats are falling to the ground. My house is next to an 8ish story one, and in my dream it was reduced to 1 and a half stories of rubble. Weird visions have the ceiling in my room coming down on top of me as well.

Three hours something later I wake up again to obnoxious rattling. I know this because I looked at my clockradio. Its nice red letters are easy to read at night. What woke me up with this now reoccuring rattling. At this point I became slightly unnerved for several reasons. The first was that I was in the middle of having dreams where buildings were falling to the ground and ceilings were caving in. The second was that I was getting shorted on my sleep. Lack of sleep can contribute to unnervedness (yes I know I'm making words up). So I get up and shove my glasses on, in no particular order, and walk to my thin rectangular window. I say thin rectangular window because I have two windows, one facing the west, a wider rectangular window, as well as one facing the east, a thinner rectangle. (Don't worry I love them both the same.) I look out it, fulling expecting to see 1 and a half stories of rubble along with carnage. I see neither and am somewhat taken aback.

At this point I open my window and stick my head out. I turn my head sideways to do this since it is the thin window I am standing at. Once my head is outside, I can straighten it, and I scan the street for any signs of devastation as well as listening for calls for help. This is mostly done with my right ear, as the left ear was dealing with the frostbite previously mentioned. I think generally my right ear gets the majority of the pillowtime. Nothing personal, just sleeping patterns really. I don't pick up on anything, and pull my head back inside, shutting the window. I stand there for a moment, wondering why the buildings are still standing, and then realize that my bare feet are touching tile floor. Cold tile floor. This thought cuts across any desire to dissect the situation further and so back into bed I go. I lay there briefly wandering about the absurdness of it all, and then decide that maybe if I go back to sleep it will all make sense. I drift off with one last thought about the ceiling falling in on my head.

The next morning I gave it one more thought, just enought to mention something over breakfast about rattling and dreams. Someone said that it was probably windy last night, and when it is windy the antenna makes noises. That is probably true, but I didn't hear noises, I heard rattling. That was two days ago.

Today I gave it another thought when someone said that two days ago there were two earthquakes that registered during the night. Only they said terremotos in place of earthquakes. That's because they were talking in spanish. Terremotos is one of my favorite words in spanish.

So I come away from all this with two thoughts really, the first is that I can tell my grandchildren I survived two earthquakes. The second is that I am not crazy after all.