Riding the Storm Out

Last night, after I put the kids to bed, I flipped the television to regular TV (not Nick) and saw that we were under a tornado warning. The radar looked pretty ominous-exactly like the radar looked before the tornado that hit Dyersburg, TN a few weeks ago. Except this time it was headed straight for us.

I got all the kids up, which was quite a chore. Micah was out like a light and I had to carry him down the stairs. We holed up in the powder room on the main floor since we don't have a basement. At this time it wasn't even raining.

Our powder room is small. In fact, it's not just small, it's downright microscopic. I put a blanket on the floor (it's tile and I had no idea how long we'd be in there) and by the time the kids and I were sitting we already had trouble getting the door closed.

And then Marissah remembered Gracie. Of course I didn't want to leave Gracie, the dumbest dog in the world, to her own devices, but damn! There was no room in there. Well, we made room. Gracie, of course, plopped right down on top of us. I'm so glad she was comfy. She was sitting on my feet which made me quite a bit less than comfy, but I didn't want to die either, so I stayed put.

Mike came to check on us a couple times (he showed his true redneck colors by standing out front and waiting for the storm to hit) and I used my cell phone to check the television station's weather website for mobile phones (that was pretty cool, but awfully small). Micah tried to sleep by wedging his head on the toilet. Marissah asked all kinds of dramatic questions (If our house gets sucked up by a tornado will we have to go to school tomorrow?) and Aaron amused himself, if not the rest of us, by scrambling (or trying to scramble) from one side of the bathroom to the other. Unless he was busy turning the lights on and off. And on and off. And on and off.

Marissah summed things up very well when she told the dog: "Gracie, I have two words for you: Tic Tac." Yep, the dog has really bad breath and in a 4' X 5" space you could really smell it. Finally I decided I would rather be sucked up into a tornado and deposited elsewhere (preferably a beach somewhere) than sit in that damn bathroom for another second. I told the kids to stay put and went to see what the weather was doing.

Ha! We got rain. That's it. Not even very much of it. Lots of lightning, but we never even lost power (not that we could tell with Aaron switching the lights on and off), which is really remarkable because we seem to lose power if the wind blows the wrong way. No hail, no branches down, nothing. Even other parts of our county didn't fare badly. No damage to speak of, thank God. Caruthersville, Missouri (100 miles northwest of here) can't say the same. They had three tornadoes touch down and they are still recovering from massive damage from the April 2 storm. Say a prayer for those people, they can use it.

So, in the end, we were perfectly safe. I could have left the kids in bed and watched the storm coverage in silence. I could have missed the sheer joy of being tromped on by Gracie and Aaron in that tiny bathroom. I definitely wouldn't have minded missing Gracie's breath. But we're safe and that's what matters. If we have another tornado warning tonight I'll do the same thing. Maybe. But I'll give Gracie that Tic Tac first.