Spanish views from a small town

This morning I woke up around eight o'clock and listened to the wind. My husband was already awake and asked if I had heard it during the night. I hadn't, because after a couple of sleepless nights, this was my turn to be a log. But, apparently, it was windy, to put it mildly. High winds had been forecast because a series of fronts are passing by these days, with gusts of up to 138 kph at Fisterra.  But the thunder in the distance worried me more. As lightning and thunder began to synchronize, I got up and went downstairs to unplug things. I unplugged everything except the fridge, which I would have had to move. Computer, television, heater, coffee pot (can't live without coffee), microwave, they all came off the grid. Then, I went back to bed, and watched the light show. It seems that every year, a house in our surrounding parishes and towns gets hit by lightning, and has everything that is plugged in go into an apocalyptic shock. I don't remember that happening in...

It's a good thing I'm not one of those people who tremble whenever they hear thunder at a distance. If I had been, yesterday morning I would have had been found in the darkest, most enclosed corner of the house. My cat Macarena would not have been happy to have me invade her space.  At a little after seven thirty I woke to a white hot sizzle that flashed through the bathroom window and an immediate boom that sounded like a wrecking ball had smashed against the house. My husband and I flew downstairs. He switched off the mains while I screamed, "Unplug everything!" W e surveyed the house and everything seemed okay, no blacken ed outlets, no smok e . We went back upstairs to bed, to await the end of the storm to check appliances. I don't want that alarm clock on a regular basis.  Unbeknownst to us, a few minutes later, our daughter was quickly traversing the streets of Santiago to get to the stop to await the bus home. As she dodged the raindrops without much s...