Aw Hail

Inspirational song: Have You Ever Seen the Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

As planned, we turned in early last night. For a few minutes, anyway. My head had barely hit the pillow when the noise coming from outside picked up. A wave of small hail had gone through maybe half an hour before I went to bed, but it was nothing like this. I just stood at the window, watching it come down for ages, softly imploring, "please don't hurt my car." The Mr was on the front porch, taking videos of the hail and overflowing gutters. He came in once it was done, and showed me a handful of one-inch diameter hailstones. He said the cars seemed fine, but the flowers and trees took a beating. He brought in a lilac blossom that was knocked off the bush.

I rolled out of bed at 4:15 this morning, and took J's sister to the airport. It took us just over an hour to get there, so she had plenty of time before her flight. We have been seeing reports of ludicrous security lines at DIA, so we left so early to beat them. It wasn't until we were turning onto Peña Blvd that she informed me she has TSA precheck. We didn't actually have to leave that early. Whatever. This way she had time to get breakfast in the airport, right?

I stopped for coffee in Reunion, so I'd have something to keep me awake on the way home. It was barely enough. I didn't go immediately to bed, but instead sat and dozed uncomfortably in my chair for hours. Some time after noon, I admitted to myself how poorly my body was reacting to the schedule disruption, and I went to lie down in bed. I had a little bit of a headache and upset stomach, and ended up sleeping a lot longer than I meant to. Now it is past midnight, and I don't know how to get back in my normal routine.

I got more messages from Oklahoma. The hail storm we had last night equaled a massive rain storm there tonight. My family were on a restaurant patio having dinner when the skies opened. In the videos I received, I saw my daughter grabbing Dmitri's booster seat (with him in it) and moving to an inside table, Valerie standing as close to the rain as her daddy would allow, and my step-dad calmly remaining at the table to finish his dinner and sip his beer. The last is our favorite part, the reaction of a lifelong resident of Oklahoma to a massive storm: "Psh. It's just rain. This is nothing."