Mercury went retrograde on May 7th. What has that meant for me? Sleep deprivation and interruption.

On the night of May 7th, J. and  were enjoying a lovely birthday (his) treat of a night at the Edgewater Hotel. We’d just watched the first performance of Star Trek (shortest review ever: awesome!) and freed the puppy from her imprisonment at the Downtown Dog Lounge.

There we were, snuggled in bed, sleeping well amidst the pillows. And the phone rang. At a bit past midnight. J. grabs the phone and sleepily murmurs ‘hello?’ only to find no one on the other end. That was weird, but not incredible. So we go back to sleep . . . except that a few minutes later the phone rings again. J. is not nearly so pleasant when he answers the phone this time. Nor the THIRD time the phone rings a few minutes after that. I actually got up and tried to remove the battery from the handset, in a vain attempt to keep the darn thing OFF. (No, it didn’t occur to me to remove the phone cord . . . I was semi-conscious, ok?) I couldn’t get the cover plate off, so we went back to bed, praying it was over. It wasn’t. This time J. hung up and called the front desk and explained that someone kept calling, did they no who? She didn’t, but she put a ‘Do not disturb’ on our phone so no one could ring through. Thank the heavens.

The ringing phone started at midnight and repeated a few times. Which isn’t ‘typical’ kids making random pranks calls timing or behavior. And let’s not forget the extra weirdness here: we were not at home, we were in a hotel. How do you get a wrong number in a hotel?

But wait, there’s more. This morning our fire alarm went off at exactly 6am. It rang for about five seconds and then stopped. J. was already up with the puppy so I let him check out the house . . . no fires. Nothing smoldering or smoking. No reason for the alarm to go off. So I went back to sleep. It took a bit, but I succeeded . . . until the alarm rang again at 6:45. This time I got up. Which was good because the alarm went off again at 7 and7:10 and then it stopped. It is now 7:53 and the alarm hasn’t gone off since then.

Just as I wrote that, the alarm went off. Joy.

Hail mercury!