Island Girl has gone into the hospital with a "flare up" of her MS. She went in on Thursday night. She ought to be able to come home on Wednesday.

She says she can't get a decent cup of tea. They only give her coffee.

So, Sir Salesman, is completely alone in trying to run the house with his son and work. I told him I would work later if he wanted to run night leads and he seemed grateful. And he did have one to close this evening.

I think it's aweful in the house without Island Girl there. Her wheelchair is in the corner but she is not in it. Even their birds seem depressed.

I thought that there would be a great deal for me to do in the house during the time Island Girl has been gone. But Sir Salesman only leaves for me to do the things I normally do - like laundry and making the bed. The rest of the house was very tidy and pretty darn clean for two "men" having been home all weekend.

I had promised Little D, the son, to bring some eggs so we could make brownies, which we did when he got home from school. Sir Salesman got home a few minutes later and I made them hamburgers and fried potatos. Then they went out into the yard which Sir Salesman also keeps scrupulously neat. When Island Girl called I brought her up to date on even the smallest details of the house and I said that her husband and son were down at the bottom of the yard, which is quite steep.

"Don't call them. But tell them there is a storm warning." she said.

I hung up with her and started to scrub out the frying pan. When I next looked up the sky was an aweful bruised color with low hanging, fast moving clouds. The air was green and crackely. There was lighting - the strange lighting I remember from my childhood in The Land That Time Forgot. Not streaks of lightning but great bursting flashes of it here and there. So common is this kind of lighting in The Land that when I was in elementary school I thought that streaks of lightning were are rare, hardly seen event....or else just sort of a symbol for lightning in the way wavey lines are a symbol for water.

Uh-oh I thought, and went to the back door, in time to see Sir Salesman urging Little D. up the hill with no small amount of urgency. I was completely unsurprised to see behind them, in the cow pasture, a small funnel cloud forming up. I wasn't very alarmed - I'd seen this before, and it did what they usually do in that area which is form up and die right away. The guys were not even to the house yet before the thing disappeared. Still, in one part of my mind I was arranging us all in the basement behind the furnace, Little D. Sir Salesman, all 4 birds and me. I hoped it wouldn't come to that since it would have been a tight fit.

I opened the front door as they came around. "Did you see that?" Sir Salesman asked, " For a minute I thought we weren't gonna be in Kansas anymore."

"Yeah, well, things haven't bee the same since that house fell on my sister" I said, glibly because Little D. was watching us with his sharp black eyes to see how serious the situation was.

"Do we gotta go in Dad?" Little D. asked.

"Naw. We can stay on the porch. You've just got to be ready to go in and maybe go down the basement as soon as I tell you, okay?"

"What about the birds?"

"I'll bring them." I said cheerfully, as if watching for funnel clouds was a sport.

We sat on the porch watching the sky and discussing the violent weather that is so common to that area. The place seems to be a draw for lightning. When I was a kid, I thought it might be because there was a fairly good sized pond on the farm accross the road from us. One night lightning hit the barn over there and burned it - it was an aweful fire in spite of the very valient efforts of the volunteer fire fighters who came out. The wrought iron of our porch electrified more times than I can count - as soon as I had the beginnings of the ability to reason I would never put my hands on that railing in a storm, though I stayed on the porch calmly through lightning that would make my heart quiver now. But, as I said, I thought it was normal.

I filled Sir Saleman in on the funnel clouds that had touched down in the area, enough to do real damage, not just uproot some trees and scare a few cows. Actually, they were closer to where I now live. But we spoke in a matter of fact kind of way - there's no point in uspetting Little D. He has to live there.

I think storms brew up and/or get stronger in that area because of the topography over there. It's very hilly, and I think that's why the funnel clouds don't sustain when they come up. But that lightning - I don't know whats up with that.

The rain started and then came down in sheets, and we went in. The wind died away and I went back to scrubbing the pot. CRACK! "Well, it's hit something down the road." I said.

After a minute the siren went off. No wonder those firemen are all so professional for volunteers, I thought. They must get a lot of practice.

Sir Salesman went on his appointment and I started to fold the laundry. Next thing I knew the Weather Channel was tuned to "Storm Stories" and I had one anxious 8 year old running back and forth to the windows and the door, turning out all the lights. I sighed, found the remote and hit the "off" button.

"Don't you think we need to go to the basement now?"

"Do you think that?"

"Come on! Lets get the birds!"

"Slow down, Little D. What do you see that makes you think we need to do that?"

"Um. Well...." and his eyes roved to the now blank t.v. screen.

"Do you hear any wind? Is there any thunder? Lightening?" I asked.

"No. No, it's just raining now, but it's dark."

"It's almost night time. Have you seen rain like this before?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Okay, then it's just rain. I think the bad part is over with, actually past us. We did all right. Lets tune the t.v. to something a little more....uplifting, and if a watch comes accross the bottom, or we hear the wind start to whistle or sound like a train, or we get that prickly feeling again then we'll go down."

"You got a prickly feeling? When the funnel came?"

"Yes, a little one."

He looked at me very gravely. " I think you would know, even if the t.v. didn't say, when to go down." and then he started happily munching his pop-corn as if he had never been upset and I tuned the channel to Scooby-Doo. Did you know that he, Scooby, is a great dane?

So. I was glad to have inspired such confidence, but I don't have it much myself. Truth is, a funnel could have been on top of us in an instant: when you can't see the clouds you have very little to go by when those damn things are around.

It's gonna be a long summer.