God? Just a minute more, please.

I can identify with Noah tonight.

Let me paint the picture for you. During dinner, we'd been listening to thunder to the north of us and watching the gathering clouds. I'm itching to get out and work on the kayak. After a day of productive, but frustrating work in the office, I just need a few minutes to keep the progress ticking along. It's just after dinnertime and we've gotten DS and DD to bed, so I head out to the garage. Call me obsessive, if you will - I prefer 'dedicated'. With the amount of rainy days that we've had this summer, any opportunity to work on the kayak is a good opportunity.

The sky isn't looking promising - it looks like it should be about 9:00 PM, but it's not yet 8:00 PM. Thunder booms in the distance. I turn on the garage lights and the outside lights and pull out the stock and tools that I need to do my work. Mosquitoes begin to gather in large numbers to join me for my task. I've got my hearing protection on as I'm working, and am using the jig saw's light (and occasional flashes of lightning in the distance) to illuminate my work. The realization that I'm standing out in a relatively open space with a grounded power tool in my hands isn't making me feel good. Dare I say, not one of my more brilliant moves, but I've only got a little bit more to do.

My work for the evening was to cut out the "floors" that will go on either side of the frames in the kayak tonight. These floors will support slats that will make up both the cockpit and the storage area behind the cockpit. Its only 6 narrow pieces of plywood - not a big job.

The flashes of lightning are coming closer together and I can now hear the thunder regardless of the hearing protection that I'm wearing. A quick check of the sky shows some truly ominous looking roiling clouds churning their way overhead as the breeze freshens from the northwest.

Please - just one more floor, one more floor...

I guess that God must look out for fools and boatbuilders. Maybe they're synonymous?

The last frame is cut and I manage to put the tools and materials back in the garage. Rain starts falling immediately after I put the sawhorses away. It's now coming down in buckets and the thunder and lightning are playing across the horizon outside the window. In the nick of time.