Who would have thought?

Let's all take a minute to relish the fact that rain has been in the forecast—or even written into the clouds—for several days and yet when it comes time to actually rain...it hasn't. We've been bone dry over here!

So naturally, I decide to water the lawn yesterday (double-purposed as a water day for the kids) and in the middle of the night the sky unleashes a huge storm. Just so much rain! 

And thunder. And lightning. 

It was noisy enough to send Alexander running into our bedroom. I pulled him into bed beside me. He was upset that he hadn't even been able to prepare by building a thunder fort. We talked about what causes lightning and what causes thunder. He was a little perplexed that thunder often will strike trees because "wood isn't even a good conductor," so it's nice to know that he's paying attention during our science lessons because, indeed, wood is not a good conductor. We tested out a chopstick with our Makey Makey keyboard yesterday and it would not conduct for us. 

I told him that it might be because electrons can move easier through solids than through gases, so even though a tree makes a better insulator than a conductor it's something solid for those electrons to move through. Plus, trees have...sap...and sap is maybe more conductive than regular ol' wood? I don't know, but I basically created this Reddit thread on the fly at 4 AM, so we'll say it was an okay answer.

I have plenty of memories of lying beside my mom in bed, petrified of storms, and asking similar questions. Once she told me about lightning rods and I imagined that we had an invisible one running right through our house (which at the time was a townhome) like a fire pole, because I couldn't quite understand the concept. Maybe our house had a lightning rod. Maybe it didn't. But it was a lovely thing to imagine because it made me feel safe. 

(My aunt's farm house definitely has a lightning rod, at least...that's what my cousins told me it was. At any rate they have a big, tall pole just beside their house. To no surprise to my mother, I'm sure, I'll admit that I used to climb up it.)

Alexander created his own way to feel safe last night. 

"That was a big thunder!" he pointed out. "It shook the furniture."

"It was very big," I agreed. "I felt it shake the house as well."

"I'll just pretend there's a man standing in the bathroom helping hold things together," he said.

Thanks for imagining that. The one thing I would prefer not to imagine. 

We talked about the storm for a long time. I pulled up the forecast radar to show him when the storm would be over. It said 12 minutes. It would really be several more hours. 

I'm beginning to lose faith in weather forecasts.

Eventually, around 5:00, Phoebe woke up, so I told Alexander that I had to go tend to her (she's been sleeping in Zoë's room recently because she's a greedy little snacker and when she sleeps with me tends to want to nurse every hour or half hour or so, but will sleep for several hours when she can't smell me). 

Unfortunately, she was really awake. So after feeding her and shushing her and hoping and praying that she'd go back to sleep, we just got up and went downstairs.

But I didn't want to get dressed because I didn't want Alexander to get up, so I just took her downstairs in my under things. I figured it would be fine. It was still dark outside. No one was going to, like, come knocking on the door.

We played around in the living room. I opened a draft of a paper and edited some of it. I walked her around, singing softly to her. 

A truck rumbled down to the bottom of the cul-de-sac. A man hopped out and noisily opened the back of the truck—one of those roll-up doors, which clattered as loudly as the thunder itself. He grabbed a large package out of the truck and started walking down our driveway. 

He knocks on the door and drops the package off. 

What are the odds?

I can make it rain by watering my lawn. And I can conjure a delivery man to knock on the door at o'dark-thirty while I'm dancing around the living room in my underwear. 

At any rate, Phoebe was ready for bed shortly before 8:00 in the morning, so we crawled into bed where Alexander was essentially glued to Andrew's back, fast asleep. I fed her, and we fell asleep. 

Andrew's alarm went off soon after and he crawled out of bed to start his day.

I remember Alexander waking up (around 9:15, I'm told), and peeling himself off my back (he'd rolled over to snuggle with me after Andrew got out of bed). And then Phoebe and I just kept on sleeping. 

Andrew had a meeting at 10:00, but he'd also managed to have the kids get their math work out of the way, while also letting me sleep in. 

So, that was the start of our ironic day.