02 June, 2011

So what did you do last night?


Here in Massachusetts (I love spelling out the name of my state, kind of crazy, but it makes me happy . MA- SSA-CHU-SE- TTS. Actually now that I am singing it, it has a similar cadence as my last name. Who knew?

It was a crazy night. I was playing a video game (I sometimes get in 15-20 minutes before I go pick up Spotty Chop. Yes, I could get him earlier, but he always asks if he can stay longer so he can play with his friends, I don’t mind so we usually end up staying until the last kid is shipped out.) Anyways, I was playing Harvest Moon, and as I believe I have mentioned ,not even my profile, but Spotty’s profile that I deleted accidently and now am trying to get him back to where he was, when I saw the cable box flashing ERC (our emergency channel thingy) I thought it was a test. I had trouble at first understanding what I was seeing, there was a tornado warning (not watch) and when it switched back to the news a man was showing us a picture of where the projected path of the tornado was going and funny, it was headed our way. I grabbed food, water, blankets and big pillows and put them next to the basement door. Then I drove like crazy to get Spotty. I spoke to the head counselor and asked if she had heard about the tornado, she had and in fact the director had called earlier to tell them to find an emergency safe spot, which she had. I know where it is and it’s as good a spot as I would have picked. I am very glad they had a plan and were ready to implement at a moment’s notice. I felt much better once I had my hands on my boy. As we drove home I explained to Spotty that we would not be able to play video games or watch TV right away and proceeded to tell him about the Tornado. I asked him if he knew what a tornado was and he said it’s a big wind that can crush houses. I told him that I had a safe place for us in the basement and that I was going to gather stuff so that we could be down there and keep safe. He said he would get his toys together so we could play. I also told him that it was super important that he listen to me and if I said “get to the basement” he needed to run to the basement without arguing or stopping to get anything. Once we got to the house I started bringing everything to the basement including books because you need books to get you through any sort of adversity. Unfortunately our basement has turned into a…shit hole, ok maybe not that bad, but we store lots of crap down there and since the bad flooding of last year there is more stuff that is unorganized so it was a bit of a challenge to navigate quickly behind the bar. Once everything was in place I told Spotty to come on down, I had put down a featherbed and had lots of floor pillows and blankets and several lanterns so we were quite cozy. Our house phone didn’t work, and of course my crackberry doesn’t get reception in the house which meant that I could see that Boy Toy and my parents were trying to call me, but I was unable to pick up the phone to get a connection. Boy Toy did eventually manage to get through once to see if we were ok and to say he was coming home as fast as he could. He has some kind of “weather alert system” on his phone, which makes sense as he works out doors, but it showed him that there was a lot of violent activity where we lived and he worried. At one point Spotty asked if we were going to die. I told him I had no plans on dying, and that we would be ok.

Long story short, we were fine, the tornado never actually came our way, we were able to sleep in our own beds.


God Damn you folks in the mid-west, how the hell do you do it? That was some scary as shit stuff there, I am glad this happens only once or twice every 50 years. I can’t imagine how scary it would have been had the tornado actually touched down where we were.

Springfield MA, snaps to you! I hope you never again have to go through something like that.

Forgot to add -- I was emailing one of my colleagues in London this morning and told him what went on last night. After saying he was glad everyone was ok said:

We had some quite heavy rain at the weekend. I had to turn the radio up as I was sitting in the conservatory reading. All very annoying. Max asked if a thunderstorm was coming. It wasn’t.

I almost wet myself laughing.