Last night, my son had a lacrosse game. Nothing new there except that once we were at the field, we received a weather notification about a severe thunderstorm heading our way. Again, living where we do, this was not extraordinary news either. For the past 7 years (as of today), I have grappled with why people would choose to live here for many reasons, none the least of which is the extreme weather. Trust me, as soon as people discover I am from NY--my accent, it seems, gives me away every time--they cannot wait to bombard me with the reasons why they could never live in such a 'big, bad city.' But, I digress. So, we are at the field and my son is playing one heck of a game, when we hear a few rumbles of thunder. Long story short, the game gets called (did you know that goals made in such a game are not counted toward a player's stats? WTH) and we head for our cars. I am heading toward home with my son and daughter, while my husband has our other two boys in his car, when a few drops of water start falling on my newly washed car. As if that is not bad enough for this neurotic car owner, the very next moment we hear what sounds like gun shots but in reality are golf ball sized hail cracking against my windshield and bouncing off my hood. Not only could I not see two feet in front of the car, but my daughter was having a panic attack in the back seat, my son was doing an amazing job of trying to calm her down and I was trying to hold myself together knowing that my not-yet-year old car was definitely getting damaged by this hail on steroids. Yes, I was also terrified that we are on the road during this crazy storm. I have never experienced anything like it before--the noise was deafening inside the car and there was no escaping it, no shelter at all. Being the fanatic about my car as I am (wash it more than once a week, no eating or drinking in it, clean the windows more than once a day...yep, a tad crazy), I was heartbroken to assess the damage this morning.
So, why the earlier digression about people not being able to understand how people could stand to live in NY? Because for me, living here is so much harder than anything I have ever had to deal with back home. Sure, it wasn't all rainbows and good times back there either but golf ball sized hail? Nope! The 'best' part is that the giant hail falls in the summer! Don't even get me started on the winter woes, the impossible road construction, the never ending building of housing developments (all looking exactly the same)--my list is endless.
As I sit here waiting for the refrigerator repairmen to arrive to fix our ice maker (on the 1.5 year old referring, mind you) along with waiting for the roofing contractor to choose a color for our new roof (courtesy a previous storm), I now need to add calling the insurance agent to my 'to do' list for the damage to our cars. Let's not forget helping my husband find that ever-elusive job.
Maybe I handled the storm all wrong last night. Perhaps I should have jumped out of the car hoping to be knocked on the head by a piece of hail and maybe then I could have woken up to have all this craziness be just a dream (okay, a nightmare). That would be lovely.
No comments:
Post a Comment