What The Hail?

Hail is my mortal enemy.

As some of you know, we were hit with a massive hail storm nearly two months ago, which completely wrecked my car and our house. Between the car and the house, we sustained over $20,000 in damage-- wahoo. Thank goodness for insurance, because golf ball-sized hail is a real bitch.

So you can imagine my reaction at 6:20 this morning when I started to hear hail coming down amidst the torrential down-pour that was also taking place. No joke-- I only heard about three pieces of hail hit the window before I was literally flying down the stairs, disabling the alarm, and opening the garage door to bring Eric's truck inside. This is not my idea of fun early in the morning, let me be clear.

Several weeks ago, I had spent my evening cleaning one side of the garage, so that we wouldn't be faced with another Hail vs. Car disaster. I cleared more than enough space for one of our massive vehicles to fit inside, and I was completely happy with myself. Of course, it would've been better if I had done this before the first hail storm, but hindsight is 20/20. For over a week now, I have had to drive Eric's truck, because the Dent-Mobile has been in the shop, having the hail damage repaired. Any of you that know Eric know that he loves his truck, and it pains him to have to let me drive it. Any of you that know me also knows that I hate driving the truck, because it's huge, noisy, and has hunting-related decals all over the back window.

So, when the hail began to rain down this morning (albeit pea/marble-sized), I knew I was in a position of life or death-- either leave the truck outside, and hope for the best, or brave the monsoon and try to get it into the garage, in order to spare myself Eric's wrath. I know this seems like a no-brainer, and it would've been-- I would've just gotten soaked in my pj's and brought the truck inside, especially since the garage would now be able to accomodate it, right? Wrong. No, Eric had stored his lawn-mowing equipment on that clean side of the garage, and I didn't think there was any way to squeeze the truck in. Well shit, now what do I do?

I called Eric at 6:30 a.m., that's what I did. I felt terrible for doing it, especially since it was a holiday, and he actually got to sleep in, but better to be safe than sorry. I had to double-check with him to see if he thought the truck would fit, even with the lawn mowers. He said no, but that I could pull the front end inside. Gee, thanks. So, I sprinted outside, through ankle-deep water (yes, my driveway floods, bad), got completely soaked, and pulled the cab of the truck into the garage. Then I just sat there, because I really had nowhere to go, since the truck was wedged in so tight that I couldn't open the driver's door. Good times.

Once the rain and hail began to subside (quite awhile later, I might add), I pulled the truck back out of the garage and went inside. Naturally, after doing sprints and being soaked to the bone, I was completely wide-awake at this point, which pissed me off, because I was sleeping so good before the hail thing happened. So what did I do? I rotated the laundry, and went outside to take a picture of the hail (for this blog, of course). I stormed around the house, completely aggravated that my once-peaceful morning had been ruined, and stewed over the fact that this would be such nice sleeping weather. What a way to start my week. Then, every time I would hear Quincy's overall clasps banging around in the dryer, I would panic that the hail had started again, which got really, really old. So finally I went back upstairs and basically forced myself to try to go back to sleep for an hour and a half, which of course didn't happen because the boys decided to start the morning off fighting. Yes, on top of my hail freak-out, I had to deal with Gabe ripping the head off of Josh's baby (for the n-teenth time), and had to get out of bed to sew it back on.

I have pretty much been able to maintain that same pissed-off state for the rest of the day. Happy Monday.