Two things I like best of all (besides some people, some of you know who you are, some don’t): art supplies and electrical storms, the bigger the better. So yesterday was a great day – I bought a couple drawing pads and a couple pens before my cello lesson, and when I got home we had the mother of all lightning storms for hours and hours.

It started like this: it got humid. It got windy. Clouds rolled in. I ate dinner. I put Gamma to bed, in the big bed, no debate this week because her mom’s away on business, she misses her so gets special privileges. I logged on. Lightning started striking all over the place, so I logged back off because last time I was online during a storm the telephone line got struck and it fried my modem and screwed up my PC. I put Beta to bed, she ended up in the big bed too because by now this was the coolest storm I’ve ever seen. Lightning was flashing like strobe lights at a Bulgarian disco in such quick succession that you lost track of which roll of thunder went with which bolt of lightning.

Rain was hitting the windows so hard it was like being inside a boiling pot of water. Gamma talked to herself in her sleep. She dreamed of a house that could fly when you opened the windows, and a friendly witch. The storm went on for hours. It started 8-ish and last time I checked the clock it was after midnight and still going strong.

I went out and got the turtle at midnight, because I was afraid she’d drown in the garden. Turned out she was fine, but I let her run around the office anyway. No cats to be seen anywhere, they’d all found shelter.

When I finally woke up at 4 am and could no longer get back to sleep so got up and made coffee instead, the world was calm. The sky was blue with occasional rainclouds showering thing, and the radio was full of flood reports. This village underwater, that road closed, etc.

The cats came in, one by one, and ate. Two of them dry, the stupid one soaked (but only his rear half, no idea where he’d been hiding). Traffic was light on the way to work. And I’m hungry because I forgot to eat breakfast.

But what a storm! This is the one nice thing about global warming, I suppose. My theory on this is that global warming doesn’t just mean all temperatures go up by a degree or two – only average temperatures do that. It means more energy in the atmosphere. And that means more violent storms. So, as much as global warming dismays me, I’m looking forward to more eight-hour lightning storms. I mean, man!

Getting struck by lightning, but surviving without damage and possibly with superpowers (like the ability to remember names and PIN codes, and what day of the week it is), wouldn’t that be cool? And then you go out and win the lottery too, or give birth to sextuplets or something!

There is a valley or plain or something somewhere, I think in the US southwest, where an artist planted a whole bunch of lightning rods to create this little lightning garden. Wouldn’t that be cool to watch in a storm?