All Hail Breaks Loose

As I sit here, the weather radar is a Technicolor rainbow of thunderstorms that could bring with them many incarnations of ugliness, not the least of which is power dips and surges that just add to the fun. I love spring, but this kind of stuff, you can keep.

One of my many fears and pet peeves is threatening weather. My husband laughs at this, really. During the last storm, I was running around like the proverbial chicken-with-my-head-cut-off trying to clear out the hall closet as a storm cellar of sorts and he was sauntering outside to see if he could actually spot a tornado going down our street. (My concern was justified weeks later when we met a local meteorologist at the grocery store and she said it was a bad storm and we needed to be prepared. Score for me.) He thinks I’m a lunatic, but he doesn’t understand because he hasn’t lived through it (a blessing surely).

When I was in kindergarten (I think – Mom, care to confirm?), my class went to the zoo for a field trip. My mother was there, and she and the teachers noticed the animals acting unusually. They decided that maybe that wasn’t the best day to have a bunch of barely-schoolers running around outside and took us back. By the time we returned, weather reports had gotten much more dire and there were several tornado spotting. Mom threw me in the station wagon and we raced home. Followed by a tornado. Perhaps time has dramatized the picture in my head, but I have a very clear image of watching that twister out the rear window. And then of being thrown into the bathtub and smothered with giant pillows until the danger had passed.

Since then, I’m always a little queasy during storms. A few years back, Chris and I got caught in one on the way back from a friend’s house. We were stuck in a traffic jam because people were parking under overpasses and blocking the streets. Consequentially and baseball-sized hail stone cannonballed through his rear window. That kind of stuff ages you a few years instantly.

The first 2 nights I was home with Sabrina, we were up for a feeding around 2:30 AM when the power went out. Both nights. I was starting to wonder if she was some kind of harbinger of… something. Then it was over and I began to worry about her having special mutant screaming powers, but that’s another story.

So I get a little unsettled when the weather guys break in to whatever I’m watching. Most of the time, everything turns out OK, and we go on. But I’ve been through the not fine instances and I hope I’ve reached my quota. But I’m on guard nonetheless.

Hey, my family can thank me when those storm stations I bought them for Christmas come in handy this season is all I’m saying.