Night Rains

Night Reigns would be a good title for a vampire movie.

Night rains, on the other hand, like the kind we've been having here in beautiful but soggy Boquete would deter even the hungriest of the neck biters.

Renfield lifting the lid of Dracula's coffin, "Yo Boss, what say we step out for a pint or two of plasma tonight?"

Drac, "Renfield you idiot, do I look like a blood sucking duck to you? Bring me back some take-out."

It rained hard enough to wake me last night. Our roof absorbs most of the sound but last night the rain slapped so insistently against our windows that it sounded like someone trying to get my attention. "Psssst. Pssssssssssst! Dude, wake up." I did, of course, wake up that is. I laid there listening to the sound of the rain for, oh I don't know, maybe half a minute and then, being a man of the age I am, my bladder spoke up. "Listen," it said, "as long as you're awake, you might as well relieve me of this wine residual I'm carrying around." Good idea, I thought as stumbled to my feet and headed across the dark to the bathroom, good idea.

That's when I tripped over the dog.

Finnegan, our Golden, has no special place he prefers over any other to hunker down at night. Or in the daytime for that matter. As I write this, his head is under our bed while his body lies splayed on the floor at bedside. He looks like a palomino throw rug. Last night he chose to recline broadside directly in my bath to the john. Although I was not moving very fast - it was pitch black in the room - I had some forward momentum and I caught him square enough that my balance was compromised enough to begin a fall. What anyone would do in a situation like that is to bring the other foot forward rapidly to gain purchase with the floor and remain upright. That is exactly what I, being the fast thinking, superbly coordinated athlete that I am, did. Finnegan, however, is a very thick dog. My second step was not even close to clearing him, especially as my first thud into his body had awakened him and he was now in the process of rising to his own feet.

I was now at a forty-five degree angle to the floor and falling rapidly. I knew though, from countless other trips (no pun intended there) to the "can", that the handle to the bathroom door was just ahead and to the left of me. If I could reach it, I could slow my fall and lessen the impact. I was not wrong. What I didn't count on was my inability to latch on to that handle. My desperate grab served only to open the door so that my swan dive took me into the bathroom itself where I landed surprisingly soft. I suppose it is not really surprising in retrospect, because I landed on the dog.

Finnegan, I must say, was quite gracious about the whole thing. He merely shrugged out from under me, licked my face once, then drifted back into the dark bedroom to find a new place to circle round three times and lie down.

As for me, I just got up, peed and went back to bed.

Outside, it was still raining.