Average Jane Weathers the Storm

I woke up on Sunday morning to the sound of tornado sirens.  That seemed bad.

I turned on the TV and learned that our area was under a tornado warning and that we could expect damaging storms and up to golf-ball-sized hail.  It made me wonder if my husband’s Jeep was parked outside.  It was.

My next thought was to wake my husband up in case he’d like to share my concern about the weather and perhaps tell me where I could find his car keys.

"Keys…studio," he mumbled, before falling back asleep.

I searched his entire desktop in the studio and found no keys.  I went back down and asked him about it again, but his contributions to the conversation were over.  Stomping back upstairs, I found his keys on my desk, went out to the garage in my bare feet and moved the Jeep inside.

By the time I settled down in front of the television again, the tornado watch had expired.  As it turned out, the storm moved north of us and all we got was a few minutes of high winds and a little bit of rain.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I are at opposite ends of the tornado concern spectrum.  When he finally woke up (almost four hours later), I told him I was *this close* to gathering up the cats, taking them to the basement and giving a regretful wave in his direction to commemorate the 11 lovely years of marriage we’d had before he foolishly sacrificed himself to the tornado.

"Eh, I’m not moving until I hear the freight train sound," he said.

"Don’t you think it’s kinda too late by then?" I asked.

"Well maybe I wouldn’t have made it down to the basement, but I could have gotten to the bathtub or at least the hallway," was his reply.

I feel as though I should track down his old elementary school teachers and give them hell for failing to properly train him in tornado safety.  Instead, I guess I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that the big storms keep passing us by.