Sun's out/ Weather bitch is vanquished

After two weeks of wind, rain, hail, tornadoes, funnel clouds, flooding, downed trees and 5 million weather alerts....the sun is out.

I think a couple more days of those 3 loud weather alert beeps.....and I would have chopped my ears off......as it was.....I felt some kinship to Pavlov's poor dogs.....yes...those bitches that were in his conditioned reflex experiment. Ring bell....salivate while waiting for food.

Me? 3 loud weather alert beeps.....and I was close to needing a Depends undergarment.

There's only so many weather beeps for tornado watches, warning, hail, and flooding one can take in a couple week period and I was at the top of my quota.

The only good thing is I made sure my pantry (the safest room in my house should a tornado come barreling through) was not only stocked with my good wine....but also a wine opener.

I realized this the first time I hit the closet....hmmmm....lots of wine stashed in here....nice amount of peanuts too...thanks to a giant Sam's club purchase....but it ain't gonna do me any good if I can't open the bottle while waiting to be rescued.

So now I've got wine, peanuts and a corkscrew in the pantry.... along with my flashlight and candles.

You make due...when you don't have a basement.

Well...I calculate in 5 minutes the sun will be hitting my front porch.....and I've got my trusty broom leaning against the wall here....time to go sweep up some debris. Guess I could get the leaf blower out...but that would bring my chore to an end too quickly....I want to sweep slowly in the SUN....and let me skin feel the warmth....and let my eyes relish the blue sky....and let my psyche relax.

Whooo hooo for the sun!

The End of Times at my local grocery store.

It's a snow day here in the South...and I did a stupid thing....I went to the gym early ....and then hungry as hell went to the grocery store as the first flakes of snow hit the southern asphalt.

Everyone in town also witnessed that first flake, checked their smart phones...saw the opaque mess on the weather radar moving towards us and drove like crazy people to the grocery store too.

I groaned when I hit the parking lot since quite a few folks made it there before I did. I hit the milk section first....because #2 son, although a grown young adult, can't seem to survive without chocolate milk. Thank heavens a few jugs left.

As the grocery store filled up with people... and I smelled the panic in the air......I sort of went berserk.

My hungry tummy plus all those Eastern European and Siberian ancestors in my DNA joined to form a toxic mix which morphed me into an extreme carbo hunter armed with a steel grocery cart.

Package of cookies to bake....yes!
Tortilla chips ....yes!
High energy cereal....yes!
Frozen yogurt ...yes!
La Leche topping....oh yes yes yes yes !

My cart filled and filled. My logical mind stepped in for a few minutes to buy some lean ground beef , some veggies and fruit...and then was shut off by my carbo hunting ancient ancestors who shouted in my head, "Screw the bananas .....grab the potatoes."

Yes great great grandmamas and grandpas.

Finally cart full.....I ended up in check out lines at least 12 people deep....everyone keeping one eye out the window at the snow and the other eye on people who might dare cut into the line.

The line didn't bother me.....I updated my Facebook status, texted the family that I had saved the day and procured food, and read my email. I took a deep breath.....I felt like an ancient hunter with a mastodon in my sled....we would not starve tonight...no matter how cold or how much snow.

I drove home and called out #1 son who was off work to help me empty the car. He opened the trunk and look startled...."What happened?" Which I took to me, why the heck are there so many bags of food. But hey, I have three men to feed, two dogs, two cats and one wild cat to tend to.....and since I'm the appointed hunter in the family right now....I'd rather have surplus then listen to all these men and animals moan.....about the lack of something to eat. Not that we couldn't all use a few days of starvation.....lol...

Anyways...There's a couple inches of snow........amounts people up North and on the East Coast would laugh at....but we take are inches seriously down here in the south. We are a fragile people who cannot go without bread and milk and the nice-ities of life like cookies and hot chocolate.


Actually hot chocolate sounds real good right now...so I think I'll head downstairs and make some then snuggle up in my office chair and start working on the silent auction bids and narratives I need to write.

If anything it's a perfect day to spend on the computer....now that I have faced down the End of Times.

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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Glimpsing the Big Blue Orb.......

Last night......one of the biggest storms I'd ever been through in the south....tore through our area.
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I don't remember storm warnings during the day.... and until the tornado sirens went off....I didn't realize the storm was more dangerous than previous thunderstorms which have rumbled through our area during the last week.
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I was writing yesterday's blog when the sirens went off...and I guess I must have a bit of a writer's soul....because....I didn't stop...or save the entry....I published it...lol....just in case.

After "publish post", I shut down the computer and headed downstairs to round up the boys.

"Where's the tornado guys?"

"I don't know."
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"Don't you have the TV on?"
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"Uh-huh."
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"But you haven't been watching the local stations.?"
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"Right."
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Obviously time for me to grab my superwoman cape.

"Okay You find a local channel.....and You get the emergency radio."

"The satellite went out.... there's no TV."

"Okay....get in my car and check the radio."

Minutes later....one son sets up the radio and the robotic voice of the National Weather Service comes on...but still no exact funnel cloud location. Maybe the local radio stations are more helpful.

I open the door to the garage and yell at my son. "So where's the tornado?"

"I don't know."

"What are you doing?"

"Listening to the radio."

"What?"

"You said ' go in the car and turn on the radio..."

"To find out where the tornado is....not to listen to music."

"Oh."

He plays the tuner and finds some addresses. The tornadoes are actually in the metropolitan area. Having grown up in tornado alley...I did what any good Midwestern person would do....I went outside and looked around.

But only for a minute.... as the lightening crackled above....and the rain cascaded down in thick sheets. This is way too close I thought.....I got the boys ready to dive into the pantry (which our builder told us is the safest place in the house).....and I ran upstairs to get the cat.

"Here Kitty Kitty."

Cat is damn smart and probably detected the urgency in my voice.

"Kitty Kitty."

I can almost hear her mental thoughts...."No way lady."

I tip over our big bedroom upholstered chair (her favorite storm hangout).... reach down and grab her. She actually hangs onto the carpet with her back claws....and starts howling...but I've got lots of adrenalin pumping...and kitty is pulled up and tucked under my arm before she can blink twice. I rush her downstairs and toss her in the hall closet.

And we wait...and listen to the radio....and I occasionally go outside.

The lightening silhouettes the bad clouds...and waves of sirens are blaring all over the city... it seems to have passed us ....but after a short break....another wave of storms approach...and now it's 11:30 pm...and my hub's plane is supposed to land in twenty minutes.

My son checks flight tracker....and surprisingly the plane is a short distance from the airport. That's crazy....what are they going to do....land between tornadoes?....My son checks out another website and sure enough the plane....is still shown above the airport.

So I grab my son's car....and head off to the airport.....and within 10 minutes....I'm in the belly of another storm.

The lightening bolts are so close the hair on my head feels like its standing up....a large thick bolt off to my right....hits the power station nearby and suddenly a beautiful eerie blue-aqua ball floats up into the sky.

Now I am scared....I can hardly see out the window....the road is flooded....and the trees are waving wildly......so I did what any good woman would do.....I start to cry.....because my hub is in a metal tube 10,000 feet above me and will surely crash...and a lightening bolt is sure to turn me into the next big blue orb.

So Here's an important lesson I learned last night....always keep your eyes wide open when driving....i.e.. don't cry in low visibility and look through itty bitty eye slits....because in a few minutes...I hit a stealth flooded section of road and lose control of the car.

Fortunately, I was the only idiot on the freeway in this section so I didn't crash into anyone.....only my heart felt like it hit a brick wall. I recover and keep going to the airport.

My son calls just as I hit the airport perimeter. They diverted the plane.

Relieved, I turned around....and only allowed light sniffling....since I didn't want to hydroplane into a wheelie again.

I made it home but had the boys sleep on the family room couches for a while. The rain...lightening...and thunder seem to rumble on forever.
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Finally it quieted down....I went outside...it was probably around 2am....I stood on my front sidewalk....scanning the sky....and mentally said to the earth...enough already.
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My next door neighbor was also out...nobody was getting much sleep....we waved.
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"You okay?"
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"Yes....you?"

"Patio's flooded and we can't get the dog out from under our bed."

I laughed....

then groaned....

shit....

I went over to the closet door......and knocked.

"Kitty Kitty" I said sweetly......

"MMMEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW"

I stepped back and let the angry tiger out of her closet prison.
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