woke up at 3 a.m. and listened to the rain. It started soon after B, heart-burned, went to bed, propped up. It continued on and off all night. I lay like one whose bladder won't let sleep but whose will won't let wake, worrying about the basement, which flooded last winter.

Finally, I could stand it no longer and went to the basement stairs. The door, usually closed at night, was open. I'd left it open in my day-ending ennui (during which I even skipped inhaling my azmacort - though I did gulp down my nightly naldecol, both for my allergies), the laundry tub propped against the doorframe for the next person going downstairs.

I picked up the tub, slightly cracked when I dropped it a few months ago, the crack now a wobbly seam (it's made of some sort of hardened rubber type product - I got it originally so that packages could be left on my doorstep against weather when I was still working out of my home), and carried leaned it against the wall with my belly while I flicked up the lightswitch, after first closing the door behind me so as to keep the light from flooding around the corner into the bedroom.

Went downstairs. All was strangely still and silent, and mostly dry (there's a perpetual oozing in one corner). I was relieved, as when I used to steel myself to swiftly brush aside the bathtub curtain in the morning where an axe-murderer or the "it's alive" baby monster might be lurking in that space hidden only to my eyes but visible to my imagination. Went back upstairs and slept soundly until I heard B stirring around 8. "It rained last night?" she asked me, still groggy.