The Sound and The Fury

We knew the storm was coming; there were warnings all day long on television and across the Internet. I mentioned to Ron that maybe we should batten down the hatches. He looked up from his newspaper, nodded, grunted, then went back to reading. At that point I wasn't worried, but in an effort to err on the side of caution, I went outside and moved the two lightweight patio chairs that had in the past proved to be vulnerable in a mild breeze, to a more secure location up against the house. I figured everything else could weather the storm.
 Ron left for work ahead of the usual time...something about going on the air early because of the storm. As the afternoon passed and the weather and warnings got more precarious, I started to get a little worried and I urged PhillyTwo to cancel her evening class. She maintained, "I can't. I have students coming early to make up their exams." Luckily, she was safely back home before the apocalypse.
I was standing at the front door watching the wind and rain when the first hail started pounding the house. PhillyTwo was in the kitchen. She came running and we decided to get in the hall closet. But of course, we didn't shut the closet door. We stood with our heads poked out so we could continue to watch the storm through the front windows. The sound was so loud and deafening that we didn't even hear the dining room windows break, just a few feet away. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was probably five minutes, there was a reprieve. We emerged from our shelter and started looking at the piles of hail stones on the porch. Before long, the storm resumed at full throttle. Once again we retreated to the closet, but for only a brief stay. The hail stopped and the wind subsided, so we grabbed our flashlights and our cameras and headed outside. The porch and the yard were white with hail. The outdoor furniture that I had earlier decided could weather the storm was strewn across the yard, most of it ruined. Those two chairs I moved? They were right where I put them and they were fine. We found dozens of roof tiles (ours), a bunch of vinyl siding (our neighbor's), broken flower pots, ceramic garden animals with gaping holes in their heads and a busted spotlight. PhillyTwo's car was as dimpled as a golf ball and our front door looked like it was the victim of a drive-by shooting. We lost three windows and all of our front screens. The storm that hadn't worried us earlier had certainly left it's mark.

Epilogue.
There are forces out there that are just as dangerous as severe weather.
We had one small ceramic squirrel that was sitting unobtrusively on a back step. He had been newly-dubbed "The Survivor" because he had made it unscathed through the torrential rains, gale force winds and unrelenting hail. But after he lived through all of that, "The Survivor" fell prey to one of the most unforeseen dangers known to mankind...Ron. Yesterday, Ron decided to hose off the deck and in his usual clumsy, take-note-of-nothing way, he managed to knock the poor critter off the step and he broke our sole survivor. No wonder storm warnings don't scare me. I live with Ron.