No flying cows, thankfully...

Scattered showers. That's what the KULR8 weatherman said would happen. He did NOT say, "If you live in a single-wide trailer on the Montana prairie, you should find a basement somewhere this evening." Now, that would've been a helpful weather forecast.

I had just poured a very nice glass of white wine and put my feet up to read an old issue of what used to be Montana Agri-news (can never remember the new name), Maggie was watching a Tweetie Bird cartoon, Angus was snoozing in the chair. What a nice evening! Wayland, strolling through the kitchen on his way to find some sort of scuba thingee, glanced out the window and calmly remarked, "Huh. There's a funnel cloud..."

You guessed it. The one you want around in a panic situation would be him, not me.

I ran (yes, ran...he continued to stroll) to the deck, and sure enough, there was a funnel cloud. Closer to my domain than I was comfortable with. I prefer them to stay in Kansas and Nebraska, their natural habitat, and look at pictures of them in the National Geographic.

Speaking of the National Geographic, it occured to me to get my camera, which is really never far from my hand. I snapped a couple shots of the cloud up high, then we saw that it touched down, and I tried to take a picture of that, too, although I was thinking it might be a bit blurry, from the nerves.

We continued to watch the sky, Wayland rather matter-of-factly, me quite nervously. A few minutes later, the phone rang and it was Thelma G., telling us that perhaps we should think about finding a basement in short order, because the cloud had touched down on their shed and removed a portion of the roof, along with other damage that she hadn't assessed yet. She WATCHED it! And not from the basement, either.

After talking to Thelma, Wayland decided maybe it would be a good idea to go to his folks' place. If nothing else, to bring my blood pressure down. So we loaded up, quickly, and drove to Vern's, where Vern and I paced around the kitchen and the deck.

Nothing happened, gratefully, but after we got home, around 9:30, the heavens opened up and it POURED rain, here, answering our prayers. This morning is calm, wet and foggy, and we are happy to not be able to hay, happy our friends and family are alright, and happy to still be in an undamaged single-wide trailer on the prairie.

Touch down, in Green's yard.

Hard to see here, but the funnel is just under the powerline on the left, and touching down on the bottom right.

This is the first sight, through telephoto. It's remarkably clear, considering how scared I was.

"I don't have time to put on makeup every day;
I need that time to clean my gun."
-Henriette Mantel

Saints preserve us!

This blog has potential to be both more entertaining and inspirational...

*For my Catholic friends and readers: this post is not making fun of Catholicism, and I don't want you to be offended in any way, but if you ARE, straighten me out and I apologize up front, here.



This morning, just out of curiosity, I tried looking up the patron saint of accounting. I've been gnashing my teeth over the school books and expenditures, and wondered if there even was such a thing. I'm familiar with St. Francis of Assisi and St. Christopher, but that's about it.



Sure enough, there's a patron saint of accounting; Matthew, the apostle. The website I looked at didn't specify why he was chosen, so I'm going to have to do a little more digging on his qualifications. I've come to the conclusion that everyone is more qualified than I am in the area of accounting....



Scrolling down the page, I was astonished at the various saints and what they were patrons of! I'm not making this up, and I'm not making fun, mind you. It's truly interesting.



There's a patron saint for abdominal pains (as well as appendicitis, which would qualify, I guess), St. Erasmus; a patron saint of art dealers, St. John the Apostle; 18 saints for bachelors (I won't list them all); a patron saint of bartenders, St. Amand; a patron saint of cats, St. Gertrude of Nivelles, and the list goes on and on. I only made it through the patron saints of fishermen.



The website I went to, catholicpatronsaint.com, didn't give any background whatsoever for the reasons these were the saints for the particular situation or occupation. I'll have to do a little more research on that. And I'm not certain it's the most comprehensive list of saints, but it certainly seemed to have quite a few.



I go to a community Bible church, but have quite a few good Catholic friends. (They are both good Catholics and good friends.) We've never broached the subject of saints, but I think I'm going to have to call Thelma G. and get the low-down on them. The saints, that is...not the low-down on Thelma. Although, if any of you HAVE the lowdown on Thelma, please contact me!



See? More inspirational, more entertaining.

It's the end of my school fiscal year, and the financial review that was supposed to have been done in, oh, January, was finally started by the CPA last week. I've been living in front of the computer, but not doing fun things like blogging! So, by the time I get done with bookkeeping and office emails, I just want to run away from the gadgets. AND my dishwasher is broken, AGAIN! I've been doing dishes, in my free time. (I know....it's far from gadgets.)

A lot of you read Wayland's blog, so you know all about the Week O'Relatives, here at Lang's Fork Inc. They were his relatives, so I'm not going to comment one way or the other, here. I'd like to stay on good terms with the in-laws!

It has all of a sudden gotten HOT here in Cohagen, and there are thousands upon thousands of grasshoppers. When you walk across the yard, the ground looks like it's moving, but it's just the hoppers getting out of your way. They are eating my bean plants, my zinnia sproutlings, my spinach, hollyhocks, tomatoes, and t-shirts, if you stand still. Between the heat and the hoppers, the crops are looking pretty dismal. Maggie is fretting, and she squishes as many grasshoppers as she sees. On the other hand, the birds are fat, and so are the toads. But we can't market those.

I have to wrap this up, and put the school books to bed for the year, now. Hopefully, my next post will be a little more inspired and entertaining!