A Sabbath morning post...

from one who has nothing better to do.

I love living where I do. Here's yet another reason why:

THE STORMS!!!

more dramatic and clamorous than the ones in town, but not so bad as to contain actual tornados (those mostly dissipate by the time they reach here... >_>).

Okay. So. Mama and Papa leave on Friday night. They're doing business stuff together, going out for dinner, and perhaps for coffee afterwards.

Perv's in charge, I'm shot. I spent all yesterday (Thursday) at the Gamgee's house, which for me is Allergy City, and I have the beginnings of an ailment resembling a cold.

Anna starts making the babysitter's staple: canned soup. I'm in my room, mostly, trying to do...something... (as I already mentioned, I was shot. Don't ask what I was doing. Probably pacing, listening to music, talking to myself, or reading a book. Or maybe all of the above.)

During dinner, and yes I was actually present at the dinner table, the weather radio started shrieking at us. A tornado watch for our county and the county adjacent to us (we live on the western border). Okay. fine. Just a watch. The sky hasn't turned any wierd color, has it? Nope, it's just gray...and now it's pouring down rain.

Bother.

Well, the alarm keeps going off, but no ill weather manifests itself. There's just...rain. The sky's just a very heavy gray color. By the end of dinner we'd heard a severe thunderstorm warning. It was followed by several time extensions, and some more watches. It starts thundering outside.

Green Acres commences. Anna makes butterscotch pudding, and we sit around the living room with our styrofoam cups, having a great time....

while the sky brews overhead. We're none too worried, having seen it all before.

The wind picks up speed.

Then comes a hailstorm.

Now, I have lived through many hailstorms in my life, with hail the size of golf-balls and wind rattling the windows...but I have never witnessed anything like this. It was incredible.

At first the wind blew against the back of our house, and we could faintly hear the hail against the windows of our addition.

Then it starts pelting our living room windows (at the opposite end of the house). The ice cubes were about as big as my thumb (in circumference), but they came down at an extraordinary rate. Hundreds hit the windows every minute, and the wind grew stronger, and stronger, and stronger.... One thought the windows would break at any second.

And though all our windows remained intact, this loud barrage continued for about ten (maybe fifteen?) minutes. That was enough time to make us really worried, especially since the wind seemed to blow in every possible direction.

So, after about five minutes, we turned off the movie. Time to get shoes on, grab the bean-bag chairs, and run for the basement.

Mass panic ensues.

But it's good we went to the basement, because just as we settled down there, these huge lightning bolts set off their splintering light in the sky overhead... and I crept upstairs in the dark to ensure that all the computers were off, and the appliances unplugged... We took our cheap cd player to the basement, along with a Bible, misc. other books, and a pitcher of water, and sat around for an hour or so.

It started raining HARD again. I looked out the window, and saw piles of ice lying around the yard. Our flower beds were obliterated, and our driveway was littered with green leaves from the maple trees. But the rain didn't melt the hail. And so, after the storm died down and the parents arrived safely from town, Papa and I walked out on the front patio and inspected the hail that filled our former flower beds. I scooped up a handful in my hand. Amazing.

But lightning still flashed on the horizon, and the kids were still up. It was now about nine o'clock at night... past bedtime... we were thoroughly exhausted. But we spent half an hour lugging all that stuff UP from the basement, getting PJ's on, and settling down a bit.

What an adventure.