One minute Derrol and I were sitting in our comfy chairs listening to the rain on our roof. Next nano-second we hear BOOOOOOM! ZAP! SIZZLE! Followed by my scream and me sliding off my chair in an attempt to get as far away from that doom-filled noise.
People really do have a natural inclination to hit the floor when danger strikes. At least this people does!
We're still sorting out what all happened, but lightning struck at least close enough to our house to scramble our electric wiring, set our security alarms shrieking, and scared at least one of his nine lives out of our Bernie cat.
Of course the first to go was the phone service, my Internet DSL hook up and much to my husband's horror -- his Direct TV service! Thankfully the computer seems intact. Bless you surge protectors! The cordless phone is toast. Communication came to a stand still. It may be the first time I've been truly thankful for our cell phone.
And my husband's grieving over his electric toothbrush. It took him two years to decide which brand to buy and in a flash, we're back to manual brushing. Oh what a hardship. Not.
It wasn't even a bad storm, as storms go here in the lightning capital of the world. Just bad lightning placement. So it is a wakeup call for us that if we actually experience a hurricane or tornado or severe tropical storm -- we're on our own. I think we'll be nixing our Bell South service and searching for something a bit more dependable. If there is such a thing. And we'll be investing in a weather radio and lots of batteries.
We're waiting expectantly for an electrician to test out our electrical systems. We also added a new garage door opener to our garage door order. Of course the nice man who came out to measure for the door more than a week ago asked me, "Are you going to replace the opener?" And I confidently replied, "Oh no, it works fine...."
How quickly acts of God change things.
A day without email access seemed like an eternity and made me realize how addicted I am to that form of communication. Add to that no phones, no television, and sadly no hot tub, our leisurely Florida lifestyle took on a less appealing style.
Thankfully the air conditioner kept working without pause or hesitation. I guess it is true that God knows how much we can bear and doesn't give us more than we can shoulder. After a good night's sleep, things began to look better. And I'm actually hopeful again that all is well. But I am stocking up on surge protectors, and instituting an 'unplug everything' policy at the first dark cloud.
We realized that our assurance that we were ready for bad weather -- was a false sense of security. We need to get organized and ready for whatever nature throws at us. I may get a special necklace and wear the key to the security alarms around my neck -- shrieking sirens that can not be silenced can cause a man and women to resort to some fearful things to shut them up. And worst of all, the security company had no clue we were having a problem. That doesn't make me feel very secure....
Hopefully we'll be good as new soon. But for now we are just feeling very thankful that it wasn't worse and there are people willing to help us get back to normal -- whatever that is.
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My 15 yr old was out sailing last week, not his favourite past time (he'd rather be kayaking, I think) but it was nice, the lake was calm. All of a sudden, a thunderstorm rolled over and there was a lightening strike just in front of him, in the water, and then one right behind. What a fright he had.
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