Oh, Hail!

After some days of glorious weather, yesterday morning the clouds were down over the hilltops and the sky was grey...again.  At least the rain held off until I'd finished in the barn, but it was back to warm gloves and double sweaters.  Later, the skies opened up and poured rain, and then hail.  Seems to me I've heard that song before.  It was a good day to clean up stacks of paperwork and magazines that I'd set aside until "later" and watch old movies.  (Sometimes "later" takes longer to roll around than it should...with any luck, I can usually find something more urgent or interesting to do.)  Most of the time, living without central heat or air conditioning is a minor inconvenience, but once in awhile I remember how nice it was to turn the thermostat up or down a notch for instant comfort.  Knowing (okay, hoping) that we are at the tail end of winter, it didn't seem worthwhile to clean the wood stove and haul in firewood just for the day.  I did receive heartwarming calls from all of my Kids for Mother's Day.  With the exception of my SoCal son, we're getting together next weekend for a combined birthday/Mother's Day celebration.  I've decided to use capital-K for my people Kids and lower case-K for the animal/fowl variety, since I use the term interchangeably and laugh to myself at the looks of resultant confusion.  If I could just speak in capitals, I'd be home free. 

In the late afternoon, I joined Joel and Judy, their daughter, and a friend for dinner and a lovely evening of good food and conversation.  It was still light when I got home to put the (lower case) kids to bed.  The free rangers have given up on finding more exciting nesting sites, and all the eggs were either in the hen house or back in the feed barn.  I'd discovered some in the crawl space under the coop, but they'll have to stay there as I'm neither in shape nor inclined to go in there after them. 

It's grey again this morning.  I may rethink my position on firewood.