I had just drifted off to sleep last night when I woke up to see Dan standing in the light from the streetlight outside out window, looking through the blinds and laughing. I thought this was just another bizzarre dream until I heard the noise. The incredible noise. It was like hundreds of people were throwing rocks at all of our windows. It was hail. Really really big pieces of hail, and it was coming down like you would just not believe.
So Dan and I stood around in our pajamas looking out through the blinds until I had a terrible thought. My plant, the only plant I have ever managed to keep alive for more than ten minutes, the plant my old editor gave me when I lived in Clovis, the plant that has been with me longer than Dan has, was sitting on the porch. In the hail!! So I run out there, in the hail, which is basically flying in horizontally at 100 miles and hour, crunching around in my bare feet (Word to the wise: If you ever need to run around in the hail to save your houseplant, you should pause a moment to put your slippers on, because you will probably also want to walk somewhere the next
day.) and scoop up my plant, which is all broken and naked and leafless and extremely dejected looking. I took it inside and scooped all the ice out of its pot and cleaned off all the killed leaves and talked soothingly to it and gave it some warm water and put it on top of my dryer to warm up, but I�m afraid it�s totally going to die. And if it doesn�t I may still be screwed because my husband might have to leave me after seeing me talking to a plant at midnight in my pajamas. Anyway, here is a picture of my sad little plant, proof positive that I am not fit to have children, since I might leave them out in the hail.