Tornadoes

Blogging ahead always seemed like such a good idea to me because then it looks like I am more consistent with it when I really am not. But it also makes me seem oblivious to what is going on around me. This week has been a terrible one for the South, particulary those in Alabama. Jer and I have been saying constantly--can't wait to move, can't wait to move--now we are (and selfishly so) thankful we aren't there quite yet. As far as we know, the city we are moving to is still without power and under a dusk to dawn curfew, etc. Jer and I now have family on both sides that live in Alabama but they are all ok. I have to wonder if people in our new ward are ok. I am somewhat used to dealing with tornadoes--I grew up in Alabama and Jer and I lived in Oklahoma for 3 years--1999 was one of those. The year an F5 tornado went through Oklahoma City. Although we were spared any destruction from that storm, us being further south, I definitely remember us cowering in fear under a mattress in the hallway with our two little boys--Spencer was born almost exactly a month later just a few days after another tornado scare. I remember doing tornado drills on a regular basis at school. Now the kids do "lock-down" drills regularly thanks to all the school shootings. This week was just weird. It started Sunday with us going to church in that awful storm and then it stormed and rain all the way until Wednesday night. Right when things started clearing out here, things got really ugly further south. We were on edge for those 3-4 days just waiting for an outbreak of tornadoes. Monday and Tuesday night I don't think I slept hardly at all. Jer sleeps through all these kind of things. I remember him sleeping through Hurricane Opal eons ago while I shook like a leaf listening to the man on the radio. Tornadoes are so frightening. They just rip things up and destroy like you would not believe. And people do have some warning sometimes but often there is nowhere to go. Halls, closets, bathrooms. Some lucky people have basements but for the most part people have nowhere to go. I asked my dad, who actually grew up in Kansas and has now lived in Alabama for 30+ years, why he has never put in a storm shelter and he said he just never really thought about it. I remember my Uncle Buck (great uncle I think) who lived in a manufactured home on a catfish pond farm in Mississippi had a shelter he just dug out of the side of a hill. Now I am wondering how much it would cost to put a shelter underground for us at our new house? I have claustrophobia issues so I think I would have to hang pictures of past tornadic destruction up on the walls of the shelter to keep me there. And why wouldn't storm shelters just be something builders did automatically? Don't they want to keep the people owing them money alive longer? With so many people down in Alabama still without power, I keep thinking how valuable food storage and emergency preparedness really will be. Starting to think my Disney World dreams are going to end up paying for a storm shelter for my family and better emergency preparedness. Better safe than sorry. What a terrible, terrible time for so many people.