Natural progression of Dead Calm to Holy Hell.
Dead Calm is usually the lack of air you almost always notice when you are at a camp ground using the portable toilet. No breeze. Nothing fresh this way comes.
Dead Calm {thankfully} usually progresses to Gentle Breeze. The kind you pray for on a hot day after you've mowed the lawn. This is usually associated with relaxation and sometimes goes best with a beach and the sea.
Then it picks up into a Strong Wind. The Strong Wind is probably the most irritating because you are still out and about, interacting with it. You'll recognize this because you're dress/skirt will end up wrapped around your waist, and your hair clings hopelessly to your lip gloss {usually when your hands are full}.
Next comes the Gust. A Gust is most easily recognizable when you are driving. It's especially unnerving when you happen to be driving with your knee. It feels like an invisible demon reaching over and yanking the steering wheel hard to the left or right. It usually only takes one Gust demon yank before you put your hands diligently at 2 and 10 and fly right.
A Gust usually blows over. But when it doesn't it can magnify into a Chinook. The Chinook is very similar to the Gust except the weather man almost always glosses over a Gust but almost always boasts the Chinook and associates it with a particular mile per hour speed. I think anything over 50 mph is impressive.
Finally Chinooks mature. Usually silently. And then they become what I like to call Holy Hell. Holy Hell usually occurs around 2am when you feel extra snuggly in your bed. It's pitch dark and the whole house is silent. When the Holy Hell blows it feels like everything you own, that isn't locked inside your house, will blow all the way to Minnesota. This includes door mats, mail boxes, wreaths, gutters, pieces of fence post. Once, after a Holy Hell, I found one of the cushions from my porch two blocks away tucked under a shrub.
Here's to the Holy Hell I can hear tonight. I can't wait to spend an hour tomorrow morning gathering up all the things I never knew could or would blow away.
4 comments:
I locked our door before we even went to bed because I was afraid it was going to blow open and those winds would take everything inside our house! Holy Hell is right!
I'm enjoying your coined term for what happened last night. I woke up to a crash and thought, "THE GIANT LADDER (I used yesterday to get in the house after I locked my keys inside) IS GOING TO TIP OVER ONTO MY VAN!!!" I was getting dressed to try and prevent this, when my husband looked out the window and said it was already on the ground. Luckily I had moved the van back earlier just so that wouldn't happen when I was taking it down. (It's a big sucker) We just went back to bed. Then it stopped completely. Kinda freaky I think. I will have to walk the neighborhood and see what we've lost.
Tonia ~ You are such a clever writer. I had to laugh out loud at this little ditty you wrote up. You need to quit your day job and devote it to writing. You have a talent.
hi tonia,
Im having the same problem you had with word verification. How did you fix the problem? I cant respond to any comments on other people's blogs, which is wierd because its letting me respond to yours. Can you help me, please.
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