Tornado Night Conversations

Tornadoes scare us.  This is particularly true after seeing our beloved Tuscaloosa decimated last year.  Recovery is still a very long time away. We are hyper-vigilant about being as prepared as we can be, and we don't sleep until we know we're safe.

The kiddos know where our "safe place" is, and they understand that it is not a time to be a bad listener or be scared.  We have a routine; they know what to do; we do it.

Usually all of this happens when Mick is out of town.  But he was home yesterday, thankfully, because we'd been warned all week that yesterday and last night were going to be record-settingly bad.  (How true that turned out to be, I can't really say; but we are all safe and our little corner of Georgia was spared any tornadoes last night.)  We were in the basement around 10 last night, and stayed for a solid 40 minutes while we waited out what the warnings.

WHM is holding "Bea" while CAM adjusts her helmet straps -- and obviously before I adjusted his!

So, where am I going with all this?

Two nights ago, neither Mick nor I slept very well since we're still (all of us) fighting this relentless, ever-changing plague we've apparently got.  Last night we were both flat-out exhausted, but obviously we were not going to get much sleep.  (In Tuscaloosa, we had tornado sirens, so we could have our get-out-of-here bags all ready to go at the doorway, go to bed in sweats, and know that the sirens would wake us and we could at least get to our safe place.  We were in a top-floor apartment, so our safe place was the 24-hour gym of our complex, which was one story and had interior-wall bathrooms where we could hunker down.  Here, we don't have sirens -- so it's up to us to stay awake and alert if the weather conditions are bad.)  Eventually, we decided it was safe to go upstairs to bed. I sat up and watched Letterman and Craig Ferguson while Mick, who was running on less than empty, fell asleep.  At some point after Ferguson ended, a loud crash of thunder woke up Mick -- just as I tried to roll over to finally get some sleep.  Some crazy Entertainment Extra TMZ show was on and I figured as long as I kept the channel on a network, they'd continue to break in for the weather if they needed to -- as they'd been doing for hours so far.

So I'm in bed, rolled over but still awake, and I hear Mick jump up with the thunder, and can tell he's now wide awake after his little catnap.  Here's our conversation.  Judge for yourself how tired we were.

ME:  Mickmack, are you ok?
MICK: Yep.  (long pause)  It's painful for me to watch these two, when I am up trying to watch the weather.
ME:  Who is it?
MICK:  Yoda and Kathie Lee.


--Jen

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