Hail, but not brimstone

We didn’t expect it.  The sun was shinning and the temp lovely.

When the winds picked up and the sky turned dark, I went out to take these photos.

Scary, but awesome

Feel like in some sci-fi movie...

Fluffy clouds moving on out and the storm moving on in

Beautiful, no?

Moments before...

No sooner had I stepped back in, then the hail started to fall—not rain, but hail, that only intensified as timed passed.

Hail/snow in June--they said it could happen

Hail aftermath--love that sky!

The storm, and the clouds, moving Eastward

The street gutters turned into raging rivers…

Rivers, created by the falling precipitation

as the wind howled, as if we were in a tunnel with a training racing through or what a Tornado might sound like.

Scary!

It didn’t last more than 10-15 minutes, but during that time we worried that either our windows, roof or doors would be damaged by the dime-sized hail.

Hail buildup

Pure ice- great for building snow people

That storm has passed, but another severe storm warming for our county has taken it’s place and the sky is turning ominous looking once again.

After the storm

Sigh—

There’s never a dull moment on the Front Range—or just off the Front Range—as our area is called.

Good thing the Legal Dude and I decided to wait till another day to go hiking up at the Snowy Range.

I’ve heard the sad news from Ohio, where a tornado whipped through and left several people dead, on graduation day.

So very sad…

Freedom badge—a long time coming…

On Wednesday, the teenager decided to attend the last day of school..

School let out at 11 am, but he decided hang with some buds, first at the skate park, then on to the civic center to shoot hoops, over to one bud’s house, back to the park and back again to the bud’s house.

Who knows how many miles they walked, or how many university 'free ride' buses they rode.

It was after 5:30 and the Legal Dude was already home when I insisted that the teenager finally head home.

He wanted to continue to hang with his buds until a 9 pm showing of MacGruber or head back to the park around 7:30 pm.

We said he had to come home for dinner and then we would discuss the rest of the evening’s events.

He insisted he would walk home.

I didn’t know where his friend lived and when we finally managed to wrestle the address out of him (Have you tried communicating with 13 year old boys recently?) we realized it was some 3 plus miles away.

We told him to stay put, that we would drive over to pick him up. Besides, I wanted to know where his friend lives.

As we drove there, we realized that the teenager has no concept of space, time or reality.

All the way home he insisted “I could have made it home in 20 to 30 minutes or could have jumped on the University free ride bus,” which we pointed out was no longer running due to the lateness of the hour, to which he responded, “Oh, yeah,” which only confirmed his lack of good sense or judgment.

I was already ticked-off, because he had left me dangling for a good portion of the afternoon as to his whereabouts.

I need to know where the teenager is going, who he is with, what is he doing and when he gets there. Then I need to know when he leaves wherever he is, to come back home.

I also need to know that an adult is at home whenever the teens are at someone’s home.

Finally, I want to talk to the parents to make sure it is okay that for my teenager to be there.

The teenager, on the other hand, is one of those youths who firmly believe that any intervention from his parents infringes—and I do mean, “Infringes”—on his independence and freedom.

In other words, he sees no need to call to let us know the who’s, the what, the where or whys of his coming and goings.

Yeah, right—as if!

Besides, letting him hang and wander about with his friends for 6 hours is, in my book, allowing for a heck of a lot of  independence.

But I know I was a big pain in the tuckus on Wednesday and that he was beyond annoyed and embarrassed by the number of text messages he received—not only from me but also from the Legal Dude.

Moreover, he insists that his friends do not have to check in with their moms.

Everyone tells us Laramie is a safe place and that for someone of the teenager's age, it's okay to be out walking across town at 8 or 9 pm.
Yeah. I get that it's much safer than Northern Virginia—I see little six and seven year olds biking and walking along the streets, with nary a parent or adult in sight, all the time. 

I see kids of all ages walking all over town, heading home or to school or to the park or the civic center at all times of day.

Still—the teenager didn’t grow up here and neither did we.

We don’t know many parents of the teenager's age, or the places the teens like to hang out or anything about how it all works with a teenager biting at the bit for independence and freedom.

This is a completely new minefield for us.

Maybe letting him walk home from the Southern most tip of town to the near, Northern most tip is not such a bad idea, especially if it helps him to realize his reality is anything but, and that his 20 minutes is actually an hour, or longer.

Maybe it would teach him a lesson: that he doesn't, in fact, know as much as he thinks he does.

Maybe it would help set him on the track to earning that freedom badge he so yearns for.

School’s out—for summer…

Tomorrow is the last day of school here in Albany County.

Why it’s called Albany County and not Laramie County, which is the next county over near Cheyenne, is beyond me.

Anyway, tomorrow is the teenager’s last day, although he claims he is not going.

The kids are going to Jimmy John’s, a local sandwich joint, for the morning, which is about as long as the day lasts.

The teenager wants this to be his last day, and I think we might let him have his way.

It feels a bit weird, to have school end the second day of June. The teenager’s old schools in Virginia, practically run to the end of June.

For the past several years on his last day of school, the teenager has come home to play Alice Cooper’s hit—"School’s Out"—for several hours on Guitar Hero.

It will be interesting to see if he does so this year.

If he doesn’t, I’ll be a little sad, as it’s just another indication that everything is changing and nothing will ever be the same with my little dude.

Sigh...

Memorial Day...

Have a happy, healthy and safe day, however you celebrate.

In my previous life…

sometimes when flying over less populated spaces across the U.S., I would peer down at places like Laramie and wonder, “What is that town?” “Who lives there?” “How far is it, from ‘civilization?” “What are the people (and their lives) like?” and finally, “Do they want to be there?”

I think I may have mentioned—once or twice—that with our teeny-tiny airport we don’t see many planes around Laramie, except for an occasional glimpse of one of the three daily departures or arrivals of a Great Lakes airline plane to and from the Denver airport.

Occasionally, we’ll also get a glimpse of that miniscule speck way up in the sky, that is sure to be a jet crisscrossing the great expanse of the United States, or what’s left in it’s wake—the white fluffy plumes of jet smoke.

The only clip art I could find

Now, as I look skyward and see those very same planes way—way—way up in distance, carrying people like me to destinations unknown, I wonder, “Who are they and where they going?” and finally, “Do they want to be where they are going ?”

And if any of them are peering down at me, let it be known that, “Yes. I do, in fact, want to be here.”

At least—for the time being that is.

I have just one word for you—just one word…

Plastics...

I’ve read a number of western-based fiction for my two book groups.

I’m currently reading Dancing at the Rascal Fair, by Ivan Doig, about Scottish immigrants who settled and homestead in Montana in the late 1890s.

Last Fall I read The Work of Wolves, a beautifully written and hauntingly melancholic story about several modern-day youth coming of age in and around a South Dakota reservation, by Kent Meyers.

Pieces of the story have stayed with me, including these passages about plastic bags.

"A great blob of white came rolling out of the sky and flattened against the windshield with a sucking sound. Earl jumped and then saw it was only a plastic grocery bag. It reinflated immediately and sailed away, a prairie jellyfish…Caught in the stunted and dying trees in the cemetery and on the barbed wire fence that encircled it and on the stiff stalks of yucca and sage that grew on the hillsides above it, more plastic bags flapped, ballooning away from the wind. A few years earlier, Donaldson’s Foods had switched from paper to plastic. It had taken those years for the bags to accumulate, but now they occupied all jagged and jutting edges in town, leaving nothing for new bags to catch on. Through the closed windows of the car, Earl heard the bags’ chattering. Impaled and visible ghosts. From the corner of his eye, he saw them waving in the cemetery, but he refused to look there…On top pf a pile of rusted machinery in the empty lot where someone had once tried to start a manufacturing business, a single plastic bag fluttered. Earl saluted it—a new edge discovered—and drove on by."

I know, for-a-fact, that just as many plastic bags litter North Arlington as do here in Laramie but they're  usually ‘drowned’ and lying dormant or hidden in bushes or the like, by the rain and humidity.

The wind here, however, keeps the bags alive, floating and billowing like “prairie jellyfish” or “chattering impaled and visible ghosts,” waving as we pass by.

Plastic---caught along Happy Jack Road between Laramie & Cheyenne

I first noticed them as the wind flattens them along the fence, which is directly across the street and encircles the Jr. High.

Then I noticed them dangling along other fences and jagged edges and sometimes, dancing along the street, particularly on windy days.

I also think of the Work of Wolves, and that quote from The Graduate, when I see them flying around.

Mr. McGuire had absolutely no clue when he said “Plastics” to Benjamin Braddock in 1967…

A different kind of study mate

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the Student Union Bookstore this past week.

This morning, after the ballet, I stopped in and was confronted with this display…

Wish that they had had these offerings when I was a student.

Wait!

I AM a student!

Hmm—I feel a need for another trip to the bookstore coming on…