Time for the classically rambling, oddly disjointed, frequently off topic, and totally devoid of well constructed segues update!
When Hurricane Fay decided to hug the northern most edges of the Florida coast earlier this week she drove long bands of wind and rain up into the state of Georgia…toward my hometown…ON PURPOSE YA’LL!! I think she must have somehow found out that I was going to the dentist (yes, again). It poured down rain on Monday, buckets and buckets and buckets. Not that I’m really complaining because we need it so desperately.
Anyway! So I left work early (Hurray for loosing pay!!! Oh wait…that sucks) and was put through a very unique form of dental torture. I refuse to go into to too much detail but I will say this, it involved a magnet being ‘glued’ to my teeth and a piece of computerized headgear that LibraryDiva would have paid good money to see me strapped into. *Sigh* The indignity of being me sometimes.
I left the dentist office TWO HOURS later (it was supposed to take only 10 minutes…I had been assured of this at least a dozen times…and it took two hours!!! OMFG!!!) with a raging headache. I was honestly concerned about my ability to drive myself home. It took three maximum-strength Tylenol and some time sitting alone in the dark to recover from that one but hey, at least I didn’t vomit.
My god, my life really is just fantastically colorful and entertaining, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you were me???
Tuesday (my least favorite day of the week just in case you were wondering) dawned dark and rainy…which to me means that it didn’t actually ‘dawn’ at all! Hurricane Fay had apparently decided to up her game and the county was under a flash flood warning the entire day. The sky just held onto that ominous dark grey color that anyone who lives in a tornado prone area knows so well all morning. The rain let up briefly around lunch time (and I was looking much less pale/faintly green by that time, thank you for asking. And yes, I do go into work when I’m sick because I’m a temp with means that time off = money lost and that makes life = suck.) so I was able to run out and grab something relatively ‘soft’ to eat, because after Monday’s trip to the dentist my jaw just wasn’t up to much movement-wise.
Around 3:45 pm it sky became even more ominously dark and threatening, as clouds began to actively stack up against each other.
For those of you who don’t live in either of this country’s ‘tornado zones’ let me stop the story here for a moment or two and explain a few things.
First, the weather which heralds a tornado is easy to recognize. And usually, unless it is the middle of the night and completely pitch black outside, you are going to be able to see the thing coming.
Second, there is seriously no point in panicking. Yes, you need to swiftly gather the things you need and get to a safe area but there is no point in freaking out because that won’t do you any good and is a total waste of time.
Third, and most difficult to swallow, if you are in the path of the storm it is very likely that you will be ‘hit.’ However, if you are calm, aware, and in a safe location there is a very good chance that you will be fine.
Now, back to 3:45 pm.
Keeping an eye on the sky I called my father, who was at home and not watching either the news or the weather, to make him aware of the situation. He thanked me and said he would go stand in the hallway until the sirens stopped. (We have tornado warning sirens all over the county here, every school has them, the local community college has them, and they are sprinkled throughout the downtown area.) I called my mother at work at got her voicemail which could only mean that all the employees were already in the ‘safe’ area of the bank where she works.
Not surprisingly the company safety officer was herding everyone into the tornado shelter here on property, which happens to be the entire bottom floor of the main office building.
To Be Continued …not because it’s riveting, but because I have to leave for lunch.
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