Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Return of the "R" Word





I kept my promise to myself and awoke early today. (It was 7:43 a.m. On a Sunday, that qualifies.) My room didn’t seem bright at all so I forced myself out of bed and padded to the door.

Cloudy. I switched on The Weather Channel just as the Local 8s came on. I grimaced when I saw the radar: a HUGE red and yellow cloud just above us. Some serious rain was on the way. I shed my jammies as I ran through the house, threw on the first shorts and shirt I could grab (which oddly enough, matched) rolled my hair into a ball and clipped it on my head, and ran at breakneck speed for the door.

You see, no one said anything about rain last night. I had left the area where I’d been working on the porch exposed. Luckily, that was the only area I had uncovered so it was a matter of flipping the plastic back and throwing bricks down to hold it in place. That was done in about five minutes. As I walked under the carport, I noticed that I had an open bag of mortar sitting on the cart. I quickly shuttled that out to the shed.

I literally got to watch the storm roll in. So I had to take some photos because the sky was simultaneously ominous and beautiful. I’ve shared some of those here. You can see the black streak (which was freaky) and the clouds swallow up what little blue sky there was.

As I stopped shooting, I noticed that the mother had laid my landscape forms for thewalkway atop the remaining fence panels. They’re metal. If they get wet, they’ll rust. Rust on my new white vinyl fence? I don’t think so.

I ran back to the shed, grabbed some plastic, spread it out in the carport and started carrying in the forms. As I ran back to get the last two, the rain started. It was 8:05. If I’d awakened five minutes later, it would have been too late to have gotten everything back under wraps.

When I got back inside, the Weather Channel was again broadcasting Local on the 8s. Cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms came the voice over as lightning lit up the livingroom.

Yeah, thanks for telling me that before they arrived …

6 comments:

katya said...

Wow, those are great clouds!

Anonymous said...

Greaqt pictures! That black cloud does look scary. Are you doing genealogy research instead? :)

NV said...

Thanks, ladies. It was both scary and beautiful to watch. (And then frustrating as it impeded progress.)

Ty'sMommy said...

Love the pcitures! That's what it looked like here, too! So much for getting my doors painted this weekend! Glad to see you woke up in time to save everything.

Ann said...

Major clouds! Cloudy days around here are a treat, lol!

Ya know, it must be nice to be paid so well for being so wrong (weather people)....

NV said...

V -- No genealogy. Sadly, my other blog is SO neglected ...

Tysmom -- Glad I wasn't alone in viewing it. It was definitely something to behold.

Ann -- I've always said it's the onlly job you can be right less than half the time and still keep!