woke up at 5am, thinking a strobe light had entered my dreams. So much lightning. The cat, usually on to these sorts of things, slept curiously undisturbed at my feet. There was a crash, and the sky opened up, and the loud ping of rain on my air conditioning unit. You could tell these were especially fat droplets, hitting the metal with velocity. The roar and constant patter kept me up for hours, though I refused to read or do anything productive, just lay there with the blanket tugged over my head, my mind galloping along with worry--that I would be tired the next day, that I would never get back to sleep, that I couldn’t finish the story I’d been working on for days. In these moments, I find myself envious of the cat, who could sleep through an earthquake. If he doesn’t get his 18 hours, he’s wrecked.

Anyway, here is something I never worried about: the subway system. Until Wednesday morning, I didn’t realize rain could stop the trains. The next morning, after I woke up (because I did eventually fall asleep, even with the sky howling and lit up like a gay disco) I got an email from my friend. “Dude,” it began, because this friend begins 80% of her correspondence with dude, “the trains aren’t running.”

Terrorist attack!

“No, the tornado,” she responded.

Tornado? In Brooklyn? Yes, only a few miles away from my apartment. And the subway is so old and massive and creaking that the torrential rain had overwhelmed the system. Even trains that were running crawled along, taking 15 minutes between each stop.

“Good thing we both work from home,” my friend said. And that was the last we talked about it that day.

Later, I found out that my friend Lisa walked two hours to work. People in her office walked from Brooklyn into midtown, which is probably five miles. There wasn’t a cab or car service to be found, and if there had been, you’d be backed up in traffic for hours. And yet, people still made the impossible slog to their cubicle, which is the amazing thing about New Yorkers, that they will get their ass to work. It amazes me. Me, who whines about losing two hours’ sleep to a tornado. Me, who works from her bed sometimes, the cat curled beside me. How did I get so soft? How do I change that?

That afternoon, I finished the story I’d been working on. I was tired but come on, it was nothing a little coffee couldn’t help.