Interminably intermittent internet

Apologies for missing yesterday. My internet was not allowing me to remain connected for longer than five-minute stretches, and while I can type fast, I can't type that fast. Comcast only decided to declare an area outage after we called them complaining this morning. And of course there's no clear reason why, and it just randomly cleared itself this afternoon. Maddening.

Yesterday it started out raining, moved into lightning, thunder and hail, and didn't let up all day. I have never seen it hail for twenty minutes, but it did. I'm afraid to go look at my seedlings; I know they're chewed up but my heart just can't take it yet.

My youngest was all excited about a tornado warning that popped, grabbing his teddy, his Nintendo DS, and his Calvin and Hobbes library books and hiding in the basement with his dad and I. It was exactly what I had done as a ten year old one summer in New England, except I somehow managed to stuff a sizable collection of stuffed animals and model horses into three pillowcases and lugged that downstairs. This was quite a bit before the days of handheld electronic devices. In fact it was a couple years or so before Pong (Remember Pong? I do.). You can tell a lot about a kid by what he chooses to save during a tornado warning.

The pictures are of some of the hail we got....yes it's hail, not snow, although it's four inches deep in the road.

Some of it was still hiding in the shadowed spaces under trees and bushes this morning, although that quickly melted when it started raining again.

This morning was my youngest son's spelling bee. I've been making him study all week, despite his protests that he's the smartest kid in the class. I'd also warned him not to cause a scene if he didn't win. He's extremely competitive and has Asperger's to boot, a combination that produces some impressive tantrums when he's handed something unexpected during his day.

He was more wiggly and uncontrolled than the other kids at first, but a quiet word from his teacher calmed him down and stopped the antics. She's a great teacher. He won the whole thing, as he predicted, and I was proud of him although I had to have a word with him about his poor sportsmanship. He attempted to tease one kid for missing a word, but a dark scowl and a head shake from me subdued him right away. For some things, I can badger him all day trying to stop him from misbehaving, but I've found that if I am truly deeply offended by something he's done and let him know it, it'll stop that behavior in its tracks. It takes a strong facial expression of outrage.

Yesterday when I picked up my eldest son from his school it was hailing so hard it sounded like gravel was being poured over the car. Today it was raining, heavily. My son got soaking wet twice in two days getting picked up from school. And I saw kids waiting in the pouring rain, offered seats in cars and refusing -refusing-, from middle school angst or dopiness or whatever. Actually, now that I think about it it was probably to guilt their late parents over how soaking wet they were, and get some extra video game time. There's no other rational reason I can think of to refuse a warm dry seat in a car, surrounded by plenty of other waiting parents who'd see anything untoward. Of course I've also seen these kids walking to school in a t-shirt and shorts in 20 degree weather so who knows. Better to look cool than possibly spare yourself frostbite and pneumonia, I guess.

I still have no job and no leads on one. The search continues, but now it'll likely be for part-time. I'm exploring the hand-made market, but with all the possibilities, I'm paralyzed by my knowledge. I know a little about a lot of things, but I'm a master of none. Am I good enough to sell any of it? Only time will tell. I think I have to sell myself on myself first, the toughest job of all.

No, I still haven't cut out the pj shorts pieces yet.