Bump in the Night

Hibernation called early, my eyes kept closing as I read in bed. The weekend's snowstorm was essentially over but the wind was busy rearranging the mini drifts and it crept in around the windows wherever it could. I bearishly burrowed beneath the duvet and slept. A CRASH!

Was it a dream? Was it out in the hall? Upstairs in the neighbor's apartment? Did a picture fall off the wall? Did outside doors were locked, I wasn't worried about an intruder and I don't believe in ghosts. I did not imagine it. Something fell. I was not going to go back to sleep until I investigated. I turned on a hallway light that illuminated enough everywhere except the pantry. No, I didn't see anything on the floor that shouldn't have been there. If it was the Christmas wrappings/etal, on a high pantry shelf they could wait until morning. That's what it probably was, I decided. Eventually back to bed But wide awake, of course. Hungry but only because I'm thinking about dieting and I refuse to eat in the middle of the night. Remember past bumps in the night, some scarier but none dangerous -- snow or ice sliding off a roof, cat knocking over a vase. Eventually back to sleep.

In the morning, discovery. Yes, a picture propped on the top of a bookcase fell five feet down just behind the table. Glass not broken, nothing displaced. The other picture beside it remained in place. So did the large glass vase on the other side. Why do such things happen? Some kind of engineer would give me some kind of answer, I suppose. The superstitious would look for omens. I replaced it. The morning has dawned with sun sparkling the lightly sculpted snow. The photo on this post is a window coated with snow during the storm, quickly melted but caught looking ghostly.