Life Turns on a Dime

5:15 PM, Sunday, May 22, 2011. I’m going to tell you how bad my life sucks. So bad that I am sitting next to the pool listening to thunder roll in the distance and Buckcherry. Lightening is beginning to crack off to the West. But I’m safe under the covered porch that runs nearly the length of the back of my house. In a thunderstorm you can often find me sitting back here watching the rain on the lake. Warm summer rains are my favorite. It soothes the cracks in my battered soul.

You might be thinking, HeyNey, that doesn’t sound like it sucks too badly. It doesn’t. But I worked my ass off and went through a lot to get here. Besides, the sucks part was tongue in cheek anyway. Nobody has a perfect life, but you do the best you can with what you have.

Some of my family members are going through a really tough time right now. It makes me really appreciate what I have and relieved that I’ve always planned for rainy days. But then, I’ve passed up some risky ventures that in hindsight would have really paid off.  And then this life would really suck comparatively speaking. Oh well. I could easily sit here for hours thinking about what if. And I would still be sitting in this chair rocking back and forth listening to thunder and Buckcherry at the end of my musings.

It has started to sprinkle. The thunder has really started to get with it. The light show has so far been lame.

Okay, I take that back.

I just remembered I have tea steeping on the stove. Hang on a second.

Thunderstorms take me to a higher level of existence. The smell of ozone, the fresh breeze, the frogs chirping. Currently, the thunder isn’t coming in cracks. It is a constant roll that hasn’t abated for 60 or so seconds. And the sky is green. But I’m not dashing inside and crawling into the bathtub unless the frogs and birds suddenly grow silent. And still the thunder rolls. It is bordering on creepy. Large drops are occasionally making ripples in the pool. But the wind has suddenly died. Precurser to the big kahuna? Quite likely. And still the thunder rolls. It hasn’t let up for several minutes.

I guess the fishermen, who for some idiotic reason think the lake shore is a parking lot, are fair-weather because they have vamoosed. Well there are the tornado sirens. Hang tight.

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6:30 PM, Sunday, May 22, 2011. I wrote all of the above just before the tornado hit town.

When the sirens went off iWof came out and told me to move my block rocker inside and put on some shoes. He also suggested that I get off the laptop and take it inside. Then he went in and turned on the television to watch the weather. I grabbed the portable kennel, flashlight and some sweats and put it all by the door to the garage. iWof went to the garage and moved all the junk off the crawl space access. He again suggested that I put on some clothes. I was (and still am) in my swimsuit. We were standing on the back porch watching the clouds the second time the sirens went off. There wasn’t a lot of wind, but it was hailing occasional huge chunks. One hit the shed and broke into 5 pieces. iWof went in the house then came back out to say he was taking the dogs and going under the house. He opened a window on the front and back of the house, then went out to the garage. I pulled on my sweats and helped him get two very uncooperative dogs in the dog satchel. During our struggle we decided that we would come up with an alternative plan for next time because had we been in the direct line of a tornado we would have died trying to get those dogs to keep their head down so we could zip the satchel. I asked him what made him to decide to go down there and he said the TV said there was a tornado in Joplin. I looked out the garage door and there wasn’t a lot of wind, just a little hail. A 2 by 3 inch hailstone landed outside of the door, so I shut the door and went in to check the TV. It was off the air. Still is. We don’t have cable or internet. But we have electricity. Nobody South of 7^th street has power. We had no clue.

I watched out the south door of my garage while it rained heavily and hailed some. The sky was green to the South, but you couldn’t see more than just a wall of rain. The wind was blowing a bit, but nothing like it often does when a storm rolls across the lake. There just never was enough wind to make me actually jump into the crawl space with iWof and the pups. I was looking out the door when there were two loud explosions, a half second apart, to the West-South-West of the house. It wasn’t thunder or lightening, something exploded. That made me shut the door and consider jumping down into the crawl space, the dark, tight, musty, creepy, crawl space.

Okay, I will admit to being claustrophobic, and afraid of snakes. If there had been more wind, I would have forgotten my phobias and jumped into the concrete hole. But there was way more wind a few years ago when I saw the pool cover sucked up like a balloon and then sucked back down until it was concave. And the covers to the skimmers popped up and spun around like frisbees. This is a safety cover that is held taught by around 30 springs stronger than a car hood spring. That was right before a section of my fence blew out. So the little dab of wind blowing Sunday didn’t concern me.

From what I can tell the worse damage is from about 13^th to 28^th streets. From what I can gather the funnel touched down just West of Schiffendecker in the Iron Gates community and ripped East down 20th street.

I’ve heard that Home Depot is gone, Hobby Lobby is gone. But I can’t confirm these things because you can’t get there from here. My mom called saying nobody could reach Aunt #2 so we drove over there to see if they were okay. They had been at church and had a tough time getting home. Aunt # 2 said there are a lot of semi-trucks on their side out by where I work.  We saw one fire station where the building and trucks were a total loss. A coworker sent a text and said our main building at work lost some windows but was otherwise okay. Another building on the campus lost its roof. Just getting to work tomorrow might be a challenge.

We heard one hospital in town was heavily damaged. Then later I received a text that said my Aunt #5’s office building was leveled. It is on the same campus as the hospital. My friend TSS is a nursing instructor. She sent me a note that said they were calling in all medical personnel because of the massive number of injuries. Faces blown off, lots of screaming, she said. She was headed to the mobile command center to see what she could do to help. I’m praying for her, she is going to have a long night.

In my life time, a tornado has never ripped through the center of Joplin. When I was a child a tornado ripped down the interstate and did damage South of 32^nd street. In the last decade several have gone North of town and a big one went South of town three years ago on Mother’s day weekend. But generally speaking, the most severe of the storms that hit the area run along Interstate 44. On the South end of town. I live on the North end. On a lake. Near a creek. In a valley. I always thought that would keep me safe. Now I know it was a false sense of security.

So life. Can turn on a dime. One minute I am watching the rain and thinking of what if and the next I am thanking the Lord for taking care of me and mine while praying for the lives of neighbors halfway across town.

Update: this was written on May 22, 2011 but I haven’t had an internet connection for the past week.

Update: once I got internet back, I forgot to actually upload the post. Sorry.