My Single Mom Life

Sebastian and I had decided to take a walk up to the corner store around 7:30pm last night, it had stopped raining, the sun was back out, so off we went.
When we reached the parking lot of the store, it started to rain again, and by the time we left just a few minutes later, it was coming down pretty hard.

We got about halfway down the street when it got much, much worse, the winds picked up, the rain was coming at us from all directions, and it was a mix of hot and cold rain.
Coming from the west, it was freezing cold, giant splashing rain drops, from the east, it was bath-water warm and small stinging size rain drops.

The whole time it was thundering and lightening, and the lightening just coming and coming, one after another, giant flashes, all of the soaking wet hairs on my arms were standing up, I could feel every bit of electricity in each strike inside my body.
It was absolutely crazy and I was absolutely terrified!

We were almost home, just one more block to go, the winds were still whipping, the rain was still coming down now in 55 gallon drum sized drops, and we see mark coming running toward us with no shoes on.
He's screaming something but we can't hear him through the wind and rain, he reaches us, yells at Sebastian to just run home, he'll take care of me, just go, go now he's yelling, so Sebastian started running home across the neighbors lawns.

Mark wrapped one arm around my waist and grabbed my hand with his other, and started leading me very rapidly down the street.
I asked him what the hell was going on, where did this weather come from, why was he out here, why did he tell Sebastian to run home, I was now totally confused and freaking out.

He said that lightening had been striking near our house over and over, so he came out and switched the tv to one of the 24 hour weather channels, and they said that very strong and severe thunderstorms were rapidly moving through the area, and to get indoors as hail was being reported.
He said he looked at the live radar map, the storm was heading straight for us, what Sebastian and I had just walked home through was nothing compared to what was coming in the next couple of minutes, so he decided to come get us and get us home as quickly as he could.

He told me all of this while he practically pushed and dragged me home, he was making me run as quickly as I could go which isn't very fast, but it's a lot faster than I normally can go, and just as we got in the house and grabbed some towels to start drying off, we heard the hail starting to pelt the windows and sides of the house.
I looked back out the window, and while they weren't huge hail pieces, about the size of a pea, there were a lot of them, it looked like it was snowing, and the wind and rain were blowing them in all directions.
We all got out of our wet clothes and I lit some candles just in case the power went out, it was flickering, our internet went in and out a couple of times, and the storm was over about 45 minutes later.

I am so glad that Mark came and got us, made us walk a lot faster to get here, or we would have gotten pelted with the hail.
We were walking fast, as fast as I can go on my own, but we figured that we were already wet, so running or trying to run home wouldn't change the amount of wet that we were.
It was very freaky though feeling all of that electricity in my back though, my soaked arm hairs were standing up, it felt very weird, but at least I wasn't getting struck by the lightening.
I am starting to think though, that the housing place across from our house has a lightening rod in the back of the property.
While sitting here watching the lightening out the front window from my chair, I could see it striking in that direction repeatedly.
I guess it's a good idea to have one when we have so many storms here during hurricane season, but it's kind of unnerving to have the lightening striking so close to us like that.
I've never seen it do this before though, the rod may be new to the property this year, there has been a ton of construction over there all winter long.