A Quiet Night

It’s not quite 11 PM and I’m here typing away on my laptop. Why? Well, quite simply because I’m hoping that by sheer force and determination, the internet signal will come back. Probably not going to happen, but a girl can hope, right?

It’s a quiet night in Francistown. But wait… is it really that quiet?

There’s a particularly obnoxious cricket right outside my window (and I mean right outside) and he is backed up by a whole chorus of his friends. It’s not his friends that I mind, it is his closeness. I need a little bit of personal space.

My fan clacks above my head. When it starts to sound like it is going to clack right off the ceiling, I stand up and grasp the tip, gently swivel the whole unit, and center it again. This helps… sometimes for a couple hours, sometimes for a few minutes. Once I’m sound asleep, it doesn’t bother me… it’s just in the half-asleep state that it sometimes interrupts my stillness.

Outside my window, all the dogs of the neighborhood, who were just a moment ago pleasantly snoozing, are now howling and baying and snapping – no doubt giving their opinion to someone who is walking by. And right outside my bedroom door, I hear a snoring Rottweiler, who is choosing to ignore all her buddies and sleep peacefully on. I’m so thankful that she isn’t a barker – only when it’s someone actually at our gate. Let’s hope she doesn’t pick up any bad habits from the neighborhood.

Then there is the dripping from the hot water heater (or geezer). It tends to overheat, overflow, explode, whatever you want to call it from time to time. This can be a problem since it is right by my window and if my window happens to be open (like last time) I end up mopping my floor on a day when I wasn’t planning on doing so. But when it is happy, it just pleasantly drips from time to time, so that’s a nice sound.

These are the sounds all around me on this 'quiet' night in Francistown.