Blue Night

There are lots of things I. Do. Not. Like. Among them are sirens and flashing lights. So last night, when four police cars and one fire truck parked outside our house with lights flashing I did not hesitate. I ran out of Mom's room in my best Thundering Herd of Elephants manner. So what if Mom was in the way.

Turns out some driver had hit the car that is always parked out front. (Now, Mom says that anybody who leaves their car parked on this busy street should know better. You leave a car parked on this street, and it's gonna get hit. Just a matter of time.)
The car that was hit got moved. Its front end was up on the sidewalk, and the back end was pushed over into the middle of the street, practically.

I think it's amazing how many beans can materialize out of nowhere, getting up at midnight to stand around in their pajamas, watching.

Lightning! Thunder! Hail?

It was hot yesterday. I was napping on the back of Mom's recliner.

The skies got dark, the wind started blowing, Mom closed the windows in the living room, because that's were the wind was blowing.

Then it got really scary. The skies split open in big bright white cracks. At almost the same time, gigantic explosions boomed all around us. Jasmine headed under Mom's bed. I ran around, trying to find a safe place to hide.

The big cracks kept coming, and the big BOOMS kept BOOMING over and over. It was raining hard, and it beat against the windows.

Suddenly white rocks came pounding out of the sky. We could hear them pinging the metal machines outside and the awning over the side door. Lookit, Mom took a picture...

This picture is from Mom's sister -- lookit the hail here! And lookit the water rushing by!
She said it was hail - frozen ice chunks falling from the sky. Mom said the hailstones were the size of large peas.

Suddenly the rain was pounding against ALL the windows, and coming in sideways through the screens and falling on the floor inside. Mom closed them, but after she closed one in the dining room, she slipped on the wet floor and fell down flat on her face. Mom wears glasses, and yup, she fell on them, and they got bent up.

But that's not the worst part. Mom has os-tee-oh-purr-something -sis. Something bad, and it's really bad if she falls, so she was pretty scared because she fell hard. She was shaken up, and kinda sore. She lay on the bed with some ice on her forehead for a long time while it continued to rain and the skies cracked and boomed. She kept telling me I was safe, but I didn't feel very safe, and it wasn't the storm that worried me.

The cracking and booming stopped and after a while it stopped raining. Mom got up and found an old pair of glasses. She's OK, but I don't think I'm ever going to like crack-and-boom storms.

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Tara has pictures of her Gizzy quilt here.

Firecracker Firecraker BANG! BANG!

I do NOT like firecrackers. The not-so-little sticky people next door were lighting firecrackers last night. I was in the window hammock looking outside, listening to the nighttime sounds and smelling the nighttime smells. Mom was sewing. It was really nice and peaceful.

Suddenly a series of pops, bangs, and very loud explosions interrupted the quiet. I was so surprised and frightened that I jumped out of the cat hammock and ran away to find a safe place to hide.

The safest place I could think of was under Mom's bed. And it would have been a good spot, had not Jasmine been under there, also hiding from the firecrackers. She hissed at me, at I let her, because I was more scared of the firecrackers than I was of her.

She didn't like that much and tried to attack me. I moved away from her, and scooted between the two big boxes Mom has under the bed. Neither Jasmine nor the firecrackers could get me there.

I hate firecrackers.

I can live without lawnmowers too, come to think of it. And leaf blowers.