Hey, remember me?

To celebrate Daylight Savings Time (and because I stayed home sick from church today, woo-hoo-hoo-wah-ah-ah), I thought I might try to catch up on my blog. (And speaking of church, I think if I ever get fired as Primary President I'll have waaaay more mental energy for writing. So if you've missed me, you could think up some spectacular scandal and pass it on to my ecclesiastical leaders...!) (Not that I don't love it; I do. The kids are fantastic and it provides me with a creative outlet. But it doesn't leave me with much left for anything else.) Anyway, here I am again.

Tornado

As I'm sure you all know, an EF-4 tornado hit our town ~a week and a half ago. I had seen weather reports the evening before indicating that we might have severe weather during the night, so I made sure the NOAA weather radio was plugged in and had fresh backup batteries. My cell phone usually powers down at night, but I made sure to keep it turned on and plugged into its charger. I woke up at 3am to use the bathroom and turned on the tv to check the local station when I got back. The storms hadn't gotten to us yet, but they looked bad so I stayed awake. At 4am, DH (who was working overnight) called me to make sure I was up and aware and had what I needed. Thirty minutes later, our Tornado Watch turned into a screeching Warning (thanks, NOAA!) so I roused the four sleeping girls, made sure everyone had shoes on, and we went down to the basement to wait it out. Uno had her tornado kit handy -- a duffle bag full of DVDs and a portable player -- so the girls were more excited than scared this time.

Frankly, I was annoyed. 4:30am on a school day is not the ideal time to have a tornado drill -- and that's what most of them are: Drills. Nothing ever happens. (Well, I guess there was that whole tree falling on our porch incident last year, but the local meteorologists said afterward that storm only had strong straight winds, nothing tornadic.) I expected that we'd get some pounding rain or hail, a lot of dramatic bluster, and then the whole thing would be over and I'd be unable to get the girls back to sleep before they had to get up at 7am to get ready for school.

We sat through a few rounds of the sirens, waiting for our Tornado Warning to expire. The power flickered once, but remained on. The girls alternately argued over which movie to watch and pretended to be camping.

DH called me at about five minutes to 5am, right after the sirens quit. "RCH, are you guys okay? The entire back of the hospital is GONE. There used to be a wall there and now there isn't -- the roof, the wall, they're gone. I'm all right. I've got to go."

We were fine at home. At our end of town, less than two miles away from DH, you could hardly tell it had stormed. The ground was wet, but not a bush or branch or leaf looked out of place. We had no damage at all.

I sent the girls back to bed and settled in to watch the news coverage. None of the news people had made it to the scene yet, but reports were coming in of incredible damage from the commercial district around Walmart, through residential neighborhoods behind it, and up to the hospital. DH's uncle posted on Facebook that his good friend (and the realtor who had helped us buy our house) was trapped under the rubble of what used to be her home. The CBS affiliate (which broadcasts from a neighboring state; our most local station is ABC) reported fairly early, before anyone else would confirm the news, that there were fatalities. One, then three....

I hoped at first, when it was still dark, that people were exaggerating. Midwest storms are amazing and powerful and even incidental damage can seem bigger than it may actually have been in hindsight (see: tree limb on porch). DH and his uncle (no offense) like to tell a good story; maybe it wasn't really so bad.

The sun began to come up. The news anchors reported that our town's schools would be closed for the day. An hour or so later, they announced school would be closed for the rest of the week. News trucks arrived on scene and broadcast the destruction: Whole buildings, houses, neighborhoods gone. By the end of the day, the coroner had confirmed six fatalities (a couple days ago the number rose to seven as one more person succumbed to injuries sustained from the tornado). DH, whose 12-hour shift was scheduled to end at 8am, stayed until noon as people were brought in, evaluated, and distributed by ambulance or air to other regional hospitals. (The patients who had been in the hospital at the time had all been moved into interior hallways right before it hit; nobody at the hospital was injured.)

I haven't taken any pictures of the tornado damage. The roads to those areas are blocked off except to the families who lived there, clean up crews, and volunteers; no looky-loos allowed! But a quick Google image search turns up these:


This house belonged to friends of DH (the husband of the woman in the front was his high school golf coach; their son was his classmate). E&P, this is where we went swimming last summer.



This was our realtor's house. It's a miracle she's alive, but she made it out of the rubble with only bruises. Some of her personal belongings were found later in the parking lot of a Catholic school more than 60 miles away.



An aerial view of one neighborhood. Note the trees along the middle right edge of the photo; they are FLATTENED.



If you can't laugh, you'll cry (though I think many people have done both). Painted on the side of a tornado-ravaged house (next to a random prosthetic leg): "For Sale — Fixer Upper." (I couldn't find a big enough picture of it, but after painting that, the woman wrote, "Big Blow-Out Sale!" Har-har.


It has been an emotional week for the town since the tornado (what's the opposite of hyperbole? Hypobole?). We have seen lots of stories of loss and destruction (both here and elsewhere in the Midwest) on the one hand, but also so many incidents of kindness and generosity and human good. People from around the region and around the country have stepped in to help the families affected by the disaster. I think the whole town has felt the power of the collective prayers. It has been amazing and so heartening to see.


And now for some random musings that are not about tornadoes.


I Love This Commercial

How's this for something soothing after all the storm talk? I love all the Sherwin-Williams paint chip commercials; the colors are so bright and the animation so charming. They make me happy. :-)




The Love Song of RCH Prufrock

Browsing my bookshelf a couple months ago, I came across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems. I haven't looked at or thought about those words in a very long time. I felt almost giddy; it was like running into an old friend (which those of you who love books, and maybe more especially poetry, will understand). I've always loved -- and probably over-identified with -- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but when I read through this stanza I grabbed DH and said, "There, see? This is why I'm not a great communicator. Small talk, big talk, whatever; it's too much. Right here. This is the key to understanding me." (Or really probably any neurotic introvert.)

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
    That is not it, at all.'

And DH, who may know a lot about birds (and sports and science and medicine and the lyrics to The Facts of Life and other '80s sitcom themes) but lacks confidence in his literary interpretation skills, handed the book back to me and said, "I will never understand women."

Oh well. Serves him right for any of the sports metaphors he's ever used.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Words Cuatro Can Say

The baby is 16 months old and slowly accumulating some words:

Bye-bye
Dad
Mom
[Dos]
[Uno]
Teeth (a forceful and heavily aspirated Teee to indicate she wants to brush her teeth)
Woof
Meow
Uh-oh
Cute
Thank you (pronounced adorably as Gankooo)
More-more-more (so greedy! I need to teach her Please)
Poor-poor (to indicate sadness, since we say "Poor, poor Cuatro!" when she's hurt or otherwise ornery)

There are probably more, but that's all I can think of -- and now it is nearly midnight (though it doesn't feel like it, stupid Daylight Savings Time!). I began blogging this morning; I should probably quit while I'm ahead and hit the Publish button or I'll never do it and my post will linger in draft form for a few months before I decide it's such old news it isn't worth printing.

I will try to be more consistent in my blogging from here on out -- though seriously, it'll be an uphill battle until I'm "fired" from my church responsibilities, so get on those salacious rumors! Stat! ;-)


~RCH~