Tornados

Tornadoes came through Memphis again last week. This time without warning. Steven and I had plans to meet some friends downtown, so we were in the bedroom getting ready to leave. . .suddenly we hear the tornado sirens go off. Being from East Texas, this whole tornado siren thing has been something new for me to get used to. It still takes me a minute to figure out what that loud whirring sound is every time they go off. Every Wednesday at noon they test the sirens, so you'd think I'd be well aware of what they are by now. But I'm not. Last year we were in a movie theater downtown when the sirens went off. . . we could hear the sirens over the film. The theater ended up turning off the movie and kicking us all out into the storm, saying it was a liability to have us in their building. They wouldn't even let us wait in the lobby. I guess the free movie passes they gave us were supposed to compensate for being tossed around through the sky like Dorothy and Toto. We obviously made it through the storm unscathed, but I'm still bitter about it all. Anyway back to last week, it was so weird that the sirens were going off on this day because we had just been outside with the puppy and the weather was extremely hot and sunny. . .not a black cloud insight. When we heard the siren I ran to the window and watched the blackness roll in. This brought back childhood memories for me. Growing up on the lake, every time a storm would blow in I would stand by the window or even sometimes on the back porch and watch the clouds turn dark and thick. Mom would sometimes say "Those look like tornader clouds" and then she would have us kids put couch cushions in the downstairs bathroom transforming it into our little shelter. Thank goodness we never actually had to take cover there, as we would have been a bit cramped. Here in Tennessee, Steven's closet in our hallway is our Tornado Shelter, so that night I grabbed Journey and watched the rain and wind through the window waiting to see if we needed to take cover. If your wondering about Willow (our satanic cat), I did think about her, but decided it would be suicidal for us to be locked in a teeny tiny closet with her and the dog (they don't get along, but more on that later). So Willow was left to fend for herself. Luckily, we didn't have to resort to our "shelter". After about an hour the storm passed and we still had electricity. We took a short drive around Millington, I say short because Millington is maybe as big as Livingston, looking for food and soon realized that our block was the only street in town to have power. Tree limbs and power lines were all over the place and all the traffic lights were dead. Seeing all of this made us very thankful that our place had not been touched. So we went back to our cozy house with AC and TV, and settled in for a quiet night at home. Another Tornado survived.