If you live in the Midwest, you know that the weather can be a little crazy, especially this time of year.
This year has been no exception, and last week we had some crazy storms that produced tornadoes, and the next day it snowed. Go figure. None of the storms produced any major damage other than up rooted trees, power out, etc. Basic damage for our area. But in the moment, those storms seemed a bit more scary than usual.
Or at least, maybe they were more scary to me. I have a daughter who is adorable and only 7 months old. I got wind that there was a tornado warning, and I was a little more serious than I usually would be about getting into a shelter of some sort. Usually, I would actually probably be outside looking for the tornado.
To take cover, I needed to move an ill-placed dresser off the entrance to the crawl space in my house. I began calmly trying to wake my husband, who doesn't wake up well. The short of it is that we ended up yelling at each other because he didn't understand in his dream state why the tornado warning couldn't wait until the next morning because he didn't want to move the dresser right now. I was just being unreasonable.
He finally wakes up, grumpily moves the dresser, and we open the "door" in the floor. I look down, see a spider web, and I say, "Nope! Not going down there." I thought he was irritated before, but I was wrong. He ask why I refused, and I promptly replied, "There's a spider."
By this point, 10 minutes has passed. I am getting a bit hysterical because we lost precious time arguing over whether or not the tornado would hold off to morning. My brother is texting me updates from a city over, where the storm has already passed. Based on the Doppler and the live weather reports, he lets me know that the heart of the storm and the area with the potential tornado is coming right by my home. At this point I become ridiculously panicked, and begin picturing a scene from the movie Twister, where a cow goes flying by and a character says, "We have cows." Except in my mind, it isn't a cow flying through the air, but my baby. (I know, dramatic. But I was hysterical at this point.)
The obvious thing to do now since the crawl space has a cobweb over the opening is to grab the baby, throw some blankets in the bathtub, and assume the tornado drill position we learned in school over the baby in the bathtub. So there I am, over the baby, praying that we don't die. My husband is sitting on the toilet (not using it, just sitting there) looking at me like I've lost my mind. I frantically ask him to join us in the tub, but he declined and said he would take the risk.
I finally get the ok that the storm has passed, hop out of the tub, and put the baby in bed (she somehow slept through all of the hysteria). My husband stares at me one more time, shakes his head, and also returns to bed. I proceeded to stay up all night, just in case a tornado decided to come.It didn't. And we actually never had one confirmed in my immediate area. Whoops.
I can't make this up, guys. All I can say is that having a baby makes normally routine situations terrifying. Have you ever had a situation that you blew out of proportion, and later realized maybe could have saved some embarrassment by staying a little more calm?
I was at work when these storms hit. Our power was flickering and the doors were blowing all over the place, flooding the front doors. It was terrifying. I had a customer literally crying on my shoulder because her husband was at home sleeping. I don't think it's bad to take safety seriously; we took our customers to the back room and sat in a circle until the winds calmed down.
ReplyDeleteYelling at my boss for calling us dramatic about how bad the storms were-- that probably wasn't a good idea. She didn't like that much.