I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie, sleepless

For the love of Oprah it was like Grand Central last night with all the noise and shocking dreaming I was doing. I didn't sleep a wink!

I hadn't even gone to bed yet, when at 11ish, a white van with two adults (which is still being debated) and some kids, came down the street SCREAMING! No...reallly....it was the fight to end all fights on our sleepy lil street. And god forbid they might push on the gas pedal and get off our block. It was like some slow moving screaming parade!

"Don't you lay a hand on me!"

::::smack smack::::::

"Shut up bitch

::::smack smack:::::

"Don't you call me bitch when I gots my keedz in the car!"

::::smack smack smack::::

I finally shouted, in my 'man voice', "Shut the hell up!" I stripped my vocal cords cuz I figured if I didn't put a lil mustard on the volume they would never hear me over their own screaming.

In the midst of dreams where men were pulling me from the car to attack me, which caused me to bolt upright from my stuttering slumber, and dreams of my childhood dog having seizures, I heard a noise.

clang clang clang!

It worked into my dream at first. I wasn't even sure it was really happening. I thought a metal bell was sounding somewhere in my misty dream world. Then Roxy 'woofed' and I shook off the dream cobwebs holding my consciousness down.

clang clang clang clang clang!

I, of course, had to get up and look. There was a yellow security light rotating through the neighborhood to the right. I would have to go to the office to see anything. 2:34am as I passed the clock on the other side of the bed.

Without my glasses and sleep still fuzzy in my vision, I made out a truck of some kind. Two people stood on the parkway by the curb with a long pole in the ground. They were sticking it with a hammer.

Then I saw my next door neighbor come on her porch. "You can smell it over here!" One of the guys that was hammering walked over and sniffed the side of the house. "That's a release valve. You would smell something there."

I some how put together that the neighbors had a gas leak and they were trying to turn off the shutoff valve at the street. They just replaced our city gas line with some "high powered" one. Now I'm worried ours is going to have problems!

Great.....I suppose I won't get any sleep worrying over that now.