Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Stormy Weather


Ahhhh. . . summer! I love summer! No school, sleeping in everyday, plenty of sunshine and time spent outside, swimming at the pool. You name it; I love it. I don't even mind the 95 degrees and high humidity. I hate cold weather, so I very much look forward to anything but cold. The only thing I don't look forward to is, you've got it: thunderstorms. Rain doesn't bother me at all, as long as it rains just enough so I don't have to water my lawn. However, I could do without the storms.

I HATE storms. They scare me, especially the tornadoes. I have always hated them. I remember being a child and hovering in the basement, scared to death my house would be gone when I came back up after the storms had passed. My Mom would just stay upstairs, not worried in the least because "she would see it coming" and then would take cover if need be. See it coming? Seriously!? I don't WANT to see it coming! By then it is too late, there is too little time to spare. I remember screaming and crying and begging for her to come downstairs, but she wouldn't.

But at least we HAD a basement. In this lovely state, houses don't automatically come with basements like they do other places. We have no basement, and really no place to go when bad weather hits. We have this great place under the stairs, a small closet. But since we have no basement, that nice little handy closet serves as storage for things you might otherwise find in a BASEMENT. So there is really no place for us to go. In desperate times I've all but emptied the closet so we could go in there, but as our family has grown, so has the amount of stuff we store in the closet. So much for taking cover quickly.

The only thing worse than thunderstorms are thunderstorms at night, or in the middle of the night. Then you CAN'T see them coming. You can only take cover and pray that the storm misses your house. I also worry about lightning. I know the chances of lightning hitting the house is rare. At least I thought it was until a few years ago, when it hit the ground two houses down and fried our cable modem and everything attached to it. And last summer when lightning hit a house just a few doors down. So then the pessimist in me says maybe chances aren't so small after all.

So as I write this, storms are lighting up the radar with bright red. Tornadoes have already touched down in counties south of ours. I just looked up at the TV and saw a picture a viewer took of a tornado. Not a pretty sight. The meteorologists just said that we will be dealing with these storms until well into the night, or I should say, wee hours of the morning. How in the world the girls have slept through it all so far is beyond me. So far, so good, no storm warnings here. Only that ominous tornado "watch".

Looks like I won't be getting any sleep tonight. . .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hear you. I share the same exact senitiment. And, can I just say that I have been getting NO sleep, being the one in charge of watching the radar all night? I like when Derek's here to do that. Ugh. Thankfully (and miraculously) the girls have been sleeping through it all, peacefully. Ah, childhood. :-)

Tim said...

Totally different!
Absolutely LOVE thunderstorms and lightning.
It's exciting and energizing. Dynamic and powerful.
Spring is my favorite season. And this is part of the reason.

Molly said...

I don't think I ever left you screaming and crying in the basement while I stayed upstairs. Childhood memories play tricks sometimes. But it's true that I'm probably less cautious than I should be.

And I was terrified of thunderstorms as a child, too.