We had a crazy storm here today.
This morning was beautiful. After church, Lee and I did a little window shopping, and as we came out of the last store, suddenly the sky had darkened. On the way home, it started to rain just a little.
About a half hour later, it was like someone turned on the faucet. No, even more than that – someone had turned on the firehose. I was cooking, and opened the kitchen window to watch. The wind was pulling at the tree limbs, the Spanish moss was waving like so many flags, and the lightning and thunder were constant. After a few window-rattling blasts, Luca came flying through the cat door into the kitchen, no longer content to be alone.

Once dinner was in the oven, Lee and I sat on the couch and turned on the television to see what the weather channel was reporting. The electricity immediately went out. It came back on shortly. The weather channel had a warning crawling across the bottom of the screen, advising people not to use electronic devices… like the TV? My favorite part was when the “local forecast” came on. It predicted a chance of thunderstorms, and a 40% chance of rain. Meanwhile, the severe thunderstorm warning continued to crawl across the bottom of the screen and the rain continued to hammer our house.
Lee and I stepped onto the porch to take it all in, but had to stand with our backs to the door because the rain was coming in sheets. Our potted plants were bent over, and puddles of water were collecting on our porch swing cushion. Soon, nickel sized hail began bouncing off Lee’s truck.
Back inside, Mille began to freak out. All forty-five pounds of her long body wanted to sit directly in my lap. Then she’d jump off the couch, jump back on, jump back off, back on and into my lap. Over and over.
I was thinking that this was all kind of romantic and scary and fun, listening to the rain pound our roof, until I heard a not so pleasant sound. The rain hitting our coffee table.
A leak. At first it was hard to tell from where it was coming because it was dripping onto our ceiling fan. But soon, we found it, and put a plastic bowl underneath while we tried to eat dinner and pretend we didn’t hear the drips.
The rain and the leak stopped almost as quickly as they had begun. Outside, it was beautiful again. Not as warm as before, but very sunny. The streets, the cars, the earth seemed littered with leaves and limbs, but no serious damage – except for our leak, which may or may not be serious. We’ll be paying someone big bucks to make that decision for us. Millie lapped up the rainwater from the plastic bowl, and all was right again.