So, I live in TN. Sumner County, to be precise. Did you watch the news this morning? We got hit with a bunch of “supercell” style tornadoes last night. Well, of course I heard the storms all night, but being as we live in a “holler” the one tornado passed over our house around 2:17 this morning. I know, because I woke up to hear it.
So, I wake up this morning, get my husband motivated and out the door and start getting the kids ready for school. They get ham and cheese biscuits and juice for breakfast, tuna fish sandwiches, chocolate chips cookies and cheetos for lunch and we walk out the door. On the way up the road, I note that the creek had flooded (there was debris in the road where the creek tends to flood) and comment that it would have been nice had my husband called to warn me. We pass the house where a school-bus driver lives and my daughter and I exchange looks.
She says to me, “uhhh, come to think of it, I didn’t notice our bus this morning? Did it go by?” We laugh, and note that I did think to get Dish Network to fix our issue last night so that our local channels are back on, and never even checked the school report. Why would I? This is TN, we have storms like this all the time. Heck, the road isn’t even still flooded, why would school be out?
I turn the radio on, just in time to hear “and Sumner County is closed.” We turn around, go home (luckily, we’d only gone about a mile up the road) and I realise that my cell-phone has no signal. That would be why my husband hadn’t called. I call him from the house phone (we have Vonage and it sucks so we all hate to use it) and verify that there was carnage galore last night & he will call his mother to see if she can keep the kids. My oldest is 15, plenty old enough to watch her 8 yo brother, but well, this way, I don’t have to worry about the storms that may happen today.
I finally turned the news on, while waiting for my husband to call me back to let me know that his mom was ok with watching the kids. There was a gas explosion in Sumner County, Wynnewood is demolished, and well…it’s pretty ugly here in TN. Gods, I am clueless. The funniest thing is, anyone remember those tornadoes back in…1998 (I think?) that destroyed downtown Nashville? I was working in Nashville at the time. On 12th Ave South. We had customers calling all day (it was a medical waste collection company – we had customers in like 7 states) asking if we were ok. Finally, I asked one why – they didn’t realise that we were nowhere near downtown – and was told about the storms.
I need to find someone to call me (or better yet, email me) when disasters happen. Seriously, it’s quite pathetic to think that I heard the tornado pass over us and still was as clueless about it as I was. So, what are you clueless about?
) And it’s no surprise that the weather folks salivate over rain, after all, they haven’t had any snow this year to put the state in a panic. (“There’s half an inch of snow on the ground, and the temperature’s dropped to a dangerous 31 degrees. Unless you’re an emergency worker, you need to stay where you are and not try to go anywhere until this clears up. Right now, we have no estimates for how long the snow will last, but the highs tomorrow are only expected to be in the low forties, so there’s a good chance that it could be with us for some time to come.” [Never the fuck mind that it was 60F the day before, so the ground’s warm enough that snow melts as soon as it hits it.])
.