Send in the Psychologists.......

I'm sitting here at my desk with a ball of carrots, celery and potatoes stuck midway between my mouth and stomach. It's not a good feeling.

This is what happens when you have soup for lunch and the tornado sirens go off in your neighborhood while you're eating. The loud undulating wail immediately causes your nerves to bunch....and hence....my soup is stuck in some type of esophageal suspension.

The sirens have been wailing for about 30 minutes now......and it's getting very dark outside....although I just checked the TV....and the serious weatherman (who seems secretly pleased at all the attention) says the worse is over.......someone hasn't notified the guy who flips the switch on the sirens.

We've been battered here in my section of the south for over three weeks now. It feels like we're under siege. The lightening and thunderstorms have been so intense....the floors shake...my pictures dance on the walls.....and soon my front lawn will turn into a bog.

We've had tornadoes and threats of tornadoes.....flooding ....winds...severe lightening...and strange temperature fluctuations.....where you begin the day in a sweater and change into a t-shirt in a couple of hours.

Because I live near a golf course....I'm also able to enjoy the additional wails of their lightening sirens to warn workers and golfers. Yesterday between storms I took a walk near the greens and noticed many of the sand traps are missing..... sand....and although I don't play golf....I suspect that's a necessary component of a sand trap.

The only being who seems nonchalant about all of this is my remaining dog Mattie...who is deaf. I just checked her and again she's blissfully asleep in the garage....warm, dry and snug in her bed. I presume the cement floor doesn't shake.....and since she's not the brightest dog on the planet ...there's no neurons questioning why it's always dark outside.

Her former canine companions were terrified of storms....and I actually have left-over "storm medicine" for them....low dose Valium from the vet. If my soup ball doesn't move soon....I think trying some "storm medicine" might be a good idea.

I know I should be grateful that we...my family and I and our house..... are intact during all this weather....our daily newspaper displays pictures of people who aren't so lucky....massive trees resting on sofa couches, roofs gone...water levels high enough to create indoor swimming pools ......BUT....the daily gloom ....gray.....rain and sirens....is getting stressful. This morning I've already received a couple of emails from friends around town....complaining of "raw nerves."

If things don't quite down soon...the city fathers.....are either going to have to set up chaise lounges in the river market downtown with imported psychologists to help us through our anxieties or dispense massive amounts of storm medicine to the populace.

Storm medicine might be more practical.....as I imagine some folks might take advantage of the psychologists to unload more than storm fears and hence wouldn't move off the couches....creating civil unrest among the lines of people holding onto their umbrellas and waiting their turn.

Hmmmm.....I wondered how Noah survived forty days and forty nights of this stuff? Perhaps God gave him an industrial strength storm medicine prescription .....I mean can you imagine trying to handle storms like this.....along with elephant dung?

Geez....that's a real unpleasant thought.
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Obviously a child living in the south these last few weeks.

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Oh Yeah.....I'm home now.

Painted on the back of a van's window in the parking garage.

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We're Buried under Two Inches of Snow!

Yes...I know... you're astonished ....overnight....another 1/2 inch of snow fell...1-2 inches accumulation in two days....that's BIG for down here. But unlike yesterday when it was cold and gray and icy....today the sun is shining...and every time I look out the window, it's like viewing picture-perfect winter postcards.

I was out in the snow and walking around by 8am. I opened our back gate, which leads to the main street in our neighborhood, and was greeted by a happy "woof" from an exuberant boxer running and leaping like a rabbit. His owner, practical and cautious, was a half a block away and carefully navigating the sidewalk in big sloppy rubber boots. He waved...I waved back.

In a few minutes, kids' voices were booming from various backyards. It made me chuckle-- when my kids where little I held them back to the magical morning hour of 8 am too...just in case any adults neighbors actually thought they were going to sleep-in on this snow day.

I decided to see if any of our dogs might like to frolic. You can see the wildly enthusiastic response Mattie gave me to the idea of walking in the snow. Maybe white dogs don't do snow.....

When I brought Mattie back, I found this on my car....I felt the same way too...this will all be gone tomorrow....but we can boast to our Northern friends and relatives ....."Well, we made it through one big winter storm down here this season too."

And if anyone wants to come over...please do....I have 3 gallons of MILK, 2 loaves of BREAD and one steamy romantic movie left.

Early Morning Snow Trees

How Much Snow it Takes to Shut Down a Southern City

Here's the amount of snow it takes to shut down a city in the south. Snow events down here still surprise me even though I've lived here for 10 years. When I first moved here and witnessed the weathermen become celebrated prophets of the apocalypse on the local TV stations... I felt like an outsider at a tent revival. "Oh it's gonna snow...Oh expect an inch MAYBE more"....the locals were whipped into a frenzy--wondering how many days school and work would be closed, wondering how many bags of salt might be left at Home Deport and wondering if there was any milk and bread left at the store.

Milk and Bread are serious issues down here when there's a snow forecast. Southerners immediately rush to grocery stores, gas stations, and convenience stores to buy MILK and BREAD BEFORE ITS GONE AND THE SNOW AND ICE ARE HERE. Every native southerner seems to be tagged with this set of instruction in their neurons....GET THE MILK AND BREAD BEFORE THE SNOW AND ICE COMES.

Growing up in Chicago, I don't have this intrinsic neural tag stamped into me. In fact, I've actually experienced and lived to tell the story of not having MILK and/or BREAD for a 24 hour period and surviving. I've shared this knowledge with southerners--I've told them they too can and could survive without milk and bread....but they give me a glassy-eyed stare because what I'm saying is incomprehensible to them.

But you know what? The longer I live here...the more I join in....why not? It's actually fun....I send my husband emails.....STOP AT THE STORE AND GET BREAD AND MILK ON YOUR WAY HOME BEFORE THEY ARE ALL OUT.... I stop at the video store and fill the movie prescription: one romance, one comedy, one really stupid comedy, one action adventure. I make sure we have cookie dough and hot chocolate....I pull out the "WINTER BOX"...the one that has our entire stock of gloves, hats, and scarves.

And let's face it...there are advantages to southern snow....you don't have to shovel it. You just sit in your house, look at the pretty view, drink your hot chocolate, and wait for it to melt.

It's almost noon here...and that's exactly what happened. But the weathermen are frothing on TV right now...trying to sustain the movement...put the fear o'snow and ice right where it belongs in our heart.......saying in about 3-4 hours we're going to get SLEET.....Lordy what could be worse than combining SNOW AND ICE!....My teen boys, both home, are estactic. Another day off from work/school....I'm sending them forth to grocery store and to the video store to replenish our supplies in this window of opportunity....after all we want to make sure want we don't run out of...that's right...you know it...come raise your hands and shout it.....BREAD AND MILK!