Nothing like sitting here in a thunderstorm and having our cable TV and internet knocked out. Usually our electricity also goes as we live down a dirt road and when it goes, our well won’t pump and at least twenty children then automatically feel an overwhelming need to go to the bathroom. And not to pee.

We’d had supper on the table at 4:30 after picking up kids from ecology club and art club, getting a high school daughter to her hamburger flipping job and picking the last one up from cheerleading practice while scrambling to get three teams of 10 kids ready for their soccer games. This involves The Hunt for cleats, shin guards and socks that I promise they have strowed (a Southern expression that perfectly describes the willy-nilly loss of possessions) from the van to the creek.

We’ve been in a devastating drought so the rain is very welcome.

So far we were notified on a web site about the first two game cancellations plus I’m personally obsessed with rain radar systems, I have four different bookmarked favorites as I dart between them, calculating which one I most prefer to be accurate and thereby able to dump cascades of water on my still productive gardens. I even keep the weather channel on at the same time.

One spectacular lightening strike just knocked out the cable TV and internet. When I called Charter Communications to complain they had the nerve to ask if I’d like Charter telephone service added as a feature. I barely contained a rude retort, preferring to instead point out that if I chose their phone service how in the heck would I be able to call and complain when it was out? DUH.

So we’ve already had a ridiculously early supper, it’s raining so the kids can’t go play and we don’t know yet about our last soccer game. Rain doesn’t cancel them, only lightening does. I’m typing in a word document while at least 14 kids have asked me to check the “green screen” which is how they refer to the weather radar, the rest are engrossed in Jungle Book and telling each other which ape they look like, anything is worth a good argument here.

But, on the good side, no one is acting out, no one is fighting, the police haven’t been called today for any reason and absolutely no one has had any sort of a rage…but there’s still two hours and 14 minutes until bedtime and we, as a family, can be rather irrational at times.

Note: I wrote this last night only to discover we’d really been struck by lightening and I won’t have good internet connections for two more days. I’m at a daughter’s house right now.