Thursday, February 12, 2009

Tornado Sirens


Monday night at 9, I was cheerfully playing Warcraft when that ominous, winding sounding roar came from the Rec center down the road. Having lived in Texas all my life, I am used to what seems like 6 months of tornado watches. I will however never be used to the tornado sirens going off. I hate that shot of adrenaline that shoots through your body. After a moment of stunned "what the hey", I began gathering up various pillows and blankets and began the more annoying job of waking up the zombie twins. My daughters do not wake up easily. In fact the younger Farmer has been known to go into a hysterical delirium if you wake her up in the middle of a dream. After four attempts to get her to stay in the hallway on the pillows, the younger farmer was finally corralled by her slightly more awake older sister. Grabbing my shoes and my purse, I finally hunkered down in the hallway with the kiddos and a slightly smelly black lab. For one brief moment I considered rounding up the cats and throwing them in the hall closet but figured that might just add to the general sense of chaos already ensuing. Sorry kitties. Duck and cover mis gatos. Well anyways, storm rolls over us...there goes satellite....there goes lights....Aw no....Where are the flashlights? Nothing like sitting in the dark in the hallway three feet from a catbox, a smelly dog at my feet, with a seven year old sitting in my lap proclaiming that she's gonna throw up. Aw, Good times. Ok, so obviously no tornado hit us even though three did hit in the area. Thirty minutes later, kids are back in bed trying to get back to sleep, the dog is still smelly, the cats are still totally unconcerned and I have a stack of blankets covered in dog hair that need to be washed now. Sigh. The picture above is actually from a site about preparing your cats for disasters. As if they'd listen anyway.

1 comment:

der Hundepo said...

What, you didn't go outside with some binoculars and try to spot it coming? I remember my first tornado (age 10), Dad and the brother were out back doing that very thing. I was under an extremely heavy picnic table in the utility room with Mom, crying and scared witless. Now, of course, later in life as I became more stupid, I was the one outside, but that's a different story.

...And I love kitties and all, but they ain't getting the bathtub if a twister's coming.