Weather

Me and Mr. Skittles made an impromptu decision Friday afternoon to pack some things, grab the dog, fill my car with gas and take off. We'd been itching to do a trip like this since the last one in April, but thought the idea would have to sit on the back burner for a while. Finances and all.

But something happened Thursday..

I was home alone with the pets. Mr. Skittles coming home from work was still a couple hours away. At my computer with my back to the window the first hint I had of bad weather coming was the sound of strong wind outside. I turned around and saw how black the sky had gotten.

I know people who've been in tornadoes say it sounded like a train. This wind sounded like a muted train.. or a far away one. As the rain started pelting the window I got up and went to the sliding glass doors in the living room.

Some of the dark clouds were so low I felt like I could reach up and touch them. What really caught my attention though was some rotation I saw in the clouds. I almost expected to see a tornado funnel drop right down on top of where I live. I thought I was maybe overreacting and came back to my desk.

From the bedroom, where I'd left the TV turned on tuned to CNN, I heard the unmistakable sound of a weather warning. I turned on the TV in the computer room and found a local channel and saw a tornado warning had been issued for my county and that a tornado had been sighted one county over.

I've never been home alone in a situation like this. I was scared shitless. As the siren here started blaring, I grabbed the handset phone, my cigarettes and lighter and my dog and went into the walk-in closet in the bedroom. I tried calling Mr. Skittles at work but got his voice mail. I was shaking so badly I don't know how I dialed the numbers.

I called my DIL. I saw my cluttered (but organized) walk-in closet had too many things in it that could become treacherous to me and my dog should something come ripping through, so I moved us to the bathroom. I sat my fat ass down in the bathtub as I was telling my DIL what was going on. DIL, who lives across the state, found weather news for my area and kept me updated concerning what was going on and where it was going on.

Sure I was a sissy baby. Yes, I was still safe and alive after it was over. But the whole thing shook me up more than I can say. I was still shaken when not too much later the news broke about Michael Jackson's death.

So.. Friday afternoon me and Mr. Skittles are sitting here doing insignificant things on our computers when the thought hit me. Life can be so short. Why waste it thinking "One day we should..."

We just spent two days on a road trip up and down and around here in Michigan, traveling just a tad over 1000 miles. We simply enjoyed the sights .. and enjoyed being together.