Donnern und Blitzen

Joey, organizing his cars.  I suppose that, when you have Ella
Geels for a sister, you learn your rainbow order at a very
tender age.

I feel a little sheepish.

This morning I canceled plans to head out to a playground because of the weather reports.  There was a 70-percent chance of thunderstorms, the websites said, and when I booted the kids out of the house at 8:00, it was already sprinkling.  But, just as I finished dialing the phone, the sun came out through the raindrops, and within a fifteen minutes it had turned into a beautiful summer day.

Ah well: Joey and I spent our unexpectedly free morning grocery shopping and putzing, because those things simply must be done sometimes.


I kept the boys in this afternoon, too: I considered a quick trip to the pool, but I was still expecting those thunderstorms, and the sky was looking darker.  Besides, Alex and Joey were really enjoying each other's company: things at home were so peaceful that I actually fell asleep on the sofa with a book while they played, only waking up when the two inseparable Ellas came home with their homework.

Soon after, Joey decided I had the right idea and fell asleep among his toys.

The girls had their new schedule for next year. Ella will still have two half-days each week, with Wednesday and Thursday afternoons off.  The other half of her class has Fridays off, which would have synched up so nicely with Alex's schedule, well...but so it goes.

By the time the girls had finished their work, the sky was starting to rumble, distant thunder bouncing off the mountains, but we still didn't get any rain.

And, at dinner, still no rain.  But Alex, especially, was beginning to show the effects of being indoors all day.  When he started singing Weird Al Yankovic at the table (no lie) I finally decided he and I had better steal a little exercise before bedtime.

So he and I grabbed scooters, and we raced each other down the path to the next train station. But, just as we got as far away as we'd planned on going, a few fat drops started falling, immediately followed by many, many more. Alex held out his dripping arm and said, "Um, mom? Maybe we should take the S10 home." Check out my five-year-old, knowing his way around the train lines.  Crisis breeds ingenuity.

But I decided he needed to have some fun in the rain. I have such great memories of dancing in the back yard with Kathy in our bathing suits.  Although my parents were smarter than I: they watched from the patio. But still, a kid needs to play in the driving rain sometimes, and I think Alex enjoyed himself every bit as much as 5-year-old Cheryl use to. He kept making his silly little jokes: "Mom! It's too hot out! I'm getting a sunburn! Oh no! I forgot to put on sunblock!"

When we got home, Alex was so pleased with his soggy self that he didn't want to change out of his clothes: "This is the first time I've felt cool today. Let's play cards!" And so we did, leaving butt prints on the floor.

After we had the kids tucked into bed, the thunder and lightning I'd been anticipating all day finally arrived. It was too cloudy to see any of the lightning strikes as anything other than a slight brightening of the sky, but we had some really wonderful end-of-days style thunderclaps. Dennis and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I didn't realize until about 10:30 that someone else in the house was listening to the storm as well.

When I went to check on her, little Ella was in her bed, but with her brown eyes wide open, asking why our neighbors were throwing furnitures against our walls. Having been raised California and Seattle, the kids are strangers to thunderstorms. Maybe I should have taken her out for some exercise as well, ignoring her protests that she is so made of sugar and she will melt!