Howdy.

"... and so you're back from outer space ... "

Eh, I haven't really been in outer space, although it does sound kinda fun. I've just been doing ten tons of other stuff. Sorry ...

I'm still selling houses and doing loans for houses. It's great fun. If you're joining the program already in progress, I've been your friendly mortgage goddess since January 1994; I sat the state real estate licensing exam (and passed the first time, yay) in October 2006 ... and *poof* ... what had been a career became a lifestyle.

To catch you up a bit more, the children are now 14, 9, and 9 ... it's fascinating how daily changes go past unnoticed, but cumulatively speaking, there's a world of difference. I am, quite frankly, totally in love with my children. It's a really nice feeling.

I'm gettin' older too, as the Stevie Nicks song goes, and the stupid blood pressure meds have me running out of steam way faster than I'm used to, which sucks. Tomorrow we'll find out what revelations the blood has for me, and what ongoing mess I'm going to get to handle. Yippee.

Just now, I ain't feelin' it, and that has to change before my 5:30 appointment. So ... it's off to curl up in front of the TV with Kendall and do nothing but recharge for a short while. Good to see ya ... we'll meet up again soon.

Miss me?

Okay, so I've been busy. Sorry ... but here I am again, and I'm going to go back to my rants.

Soon. I promise.

You've been warned. : )

When It's All About Mom

So today is Mother's Day ... according to Wikipedia, we Americans thugged the idea off the Brits (something we've been doing for AGES, starting with the colors of our flag) and then changed the date from the fourth Sunday of Lent to the second Sunday of May. (Pretty decent idea, that - how are you going to treat your mom during a period of denial?)

Mark and the darlings were most happy to do whatever I wanted to do, which is ever so rare. I responded first with a blatant misuse of that "anything you want today" - I slept till nearly 1:00, which isn't something that happens unless I'm quite ill!

After the snooze-fest, we went to LaserQuest, where it was free for moms (but not till after 1:00 ... so, you see, that lie-in wasn't TOTALLY me being slothful, it was really saving my family from crushing boredom ... just another example of selfless mom-ness). In our family, I came second to Mark, but I'd never been there before, so I felt pretty good about it! It was kind of frustrating at the beginning, but once I got the hang of it (and found a neat sniper spot on an upper level), it wasn't so bad. Don't get me wrong, now; I won't be paying to go, most likely, but it was okay and everyone enjoyed it.

Having fired and been fired upon, we went to Josette's Pets for my Official Mother's Day Gift. I can't tell you about it yet because I haven't introduced you to that aspect of life, but I will do that soon. Promise.

The Official Mother's Day Gift required fairly immediate stashing back at the hacienda. Once we'd finished that, though, we buzzed Nana and demanded that she and Charlie meet us at Abuelo's for dinner. Nana hemmed and hawed a bit, but once I reminded her that, as firstborn, it was I that qualified her as a mom in the first place, she shut up about my kid brother having rung to say they'd be over "later" and agreed to meet us there at 7:00 as we'd pulled strings with our friend Scott The Manager to get a table booked for 7 people at that hour on one of the busiest days of the year. Dinner was delicious and delightful, of course (and I got a free T-shirt marking the occasion, w00t).

The best bit is that I get to do all this again in a few weeks when Mark's mum is here! YAY!

Shameless Plugs and Siren's Songs

Let's begin with the shameless plug, shall we? : )

Since Kendall was three, she's been taking ballet. She loves it, and she's perfectly built for it. We live at the far north edge of town but drive into the near-downtown area to go to one certain studio for classes with one certain lady. Miss Shannon is truly talented, an absolute creative genius with patience like you wouldn't believe. I have to tell you how lucky I feel that she didn't shake the Oklahoma dust from her Capezios and take off for New York! There are at least three other studios that are much closer to our house, but they don't have Miss Shannon. She takes students as young as two (in ballet) and she's got classes in all the best disciplines: ballet, tap, jazz, flamenco, hip-hop, and (of course) belly dancing.

Have a look! Everything Goes Dance and Drama

Last night was picture-taking time for Kendall's class. We knew from last year that we wouldn't be allowed to take pictures while the guy who charges for pictures was taking pictures, so I got some beforehand ... here's our favorite:

While we were waiting for it to be our class's turn, the usual bunch of parents wandered across the street to the cute little convenience store to buy Powerball tickets and scratch-offs (yeah, it's to benefit education ... AS IF ... we all aim to be rich! -ha-). Upon stepping outside, we could see some lovely cumulonimbus clouds directly to the south of us, which typically means that somebody's in for a storm. (Better that they're straight south of you, though, since those storms usually move southwest to northeast, so they aren't likely to hit you.) Pretty soon we could smell rain, and the wind got a little weird (which is saying not much and a whole lot all at the same time, because Oklahoma is a darned windy place ... you just have to know what the wind means when it does any given thing).

Well, you know me, don't you? Not only do I have the weather-widget on my desktop, I've recently put The Weather Channel's storm alert system onto the cell phone (because believe it or not, my fat posterior is NOT always in front of this machine). Sure enough, the phone bleeped that I had a message, and it was from TWCAlerts, telling me that there was a severe thunderstorm warning for Oklahoma City. Yep, it looked like at least the southern two-thirds and the eastern half was getting a fair drenching at that moment, so hey, good on ya, glad to know this thing works.

Then the sirens went off. ARGH.

Thank you, John Harder ... friends, this man is married to a woman who loves tornadoes the way I do (which is to say NOT AT ALL) ... he did not complain one iota when he was sent across the street to check the TV at the convenience store and report back as to what was happening. (He did tease me ever so slightly about alleviating the stress of the moment by firing up a cigarette, though, so I guess I'll have to TP his house sometime soon. Sorry, John.) The guy went on these fact-finding errands not just once but several times (because later the sirens went off again, and we had to be sure that a tornado wasn't going to drop right on our heads out of the tiny little cirrus clouds that were straight up in the sky above us).

Let's draw a long story short, shall we? We got done with our bit of picture-taking, then hopped into Thumper The Big Blue Truck to go get something to eat on the way home. Usually, the brats want to go someplace like Olive Garden or Red Robin or Mimi's Cafe. Last night, though, I asked them if they wanted to go "out" or if they wanted to get something to take home, and sit and watch the storms, and the meal-in-a-bag from a place where you don't get out of the car was the unanimous winner.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it. There was another funky storm that blew through later, but it was just a nice tame little squall line with wind gusts up over 70 miles per hour and hail the size of golf balls. No big! : )~

A Nothing Day

At last, a day that is beautiful and sunshiny! Yes, there are clouds in the sky, but they are of the white fluffy cotton-candy sort, the ones that you can lie down on your back and watch float by for hours. (Okay, with a 45-mph wind, they're whipping by more than floating, but you get the idea.)

I have lots of work today. There are seven refinance transactions that I have to close this month (two down, five remaining), and a couple of purchases too, so I can't be outside enjoying the nice weather. Drat.

Hope you're having a nice Nothing Day too ... or at least a productive one.

Once More, With Feeling

Oh, the shelter, the fun little claustrophobia-inducing shelter.

We had the shelter installed in our garage in 2004, just after Memorial Day. For the last four years, we've only opened it to either go down and clean it out in anticipation of the storm season or to show it to someone else.

This year, we hadn't yet "opened" the shelter at all when the sirens sounded for the first time (see post of 5 March), and then it happened again in the middle of the bloody night at the end of the month (see post of 31 March).

Now it's getting fooking well OLD.

Last night, not far past 11, I was in bed trying to sleep (sound familiar?) when I decided to check the weather one last time. (Boy, was that stupid; I won't be in a hurry to do that again.) Hey looka here, it's Mike Morgan doing the Safe Spot Shuffle, and of course I am entranced. There's the beginning of a hook echo, and it's got a downdraft and an inflow and (new for 2008!) a hail core, whatever that is. Ooh, it's at the far western edge of northern Oklahoma County! Ooh, it's churning over NW 122 and Council! Ooh, it's headed east north east! Ooh, it's going to drop over Mercy, Gaillardia, the Kilpatrick Turnpike, Lake Hefner Parkway, Quail Springs Mall! Ooh!

Bloody hell, I grumble.

I get out of bed and put on my clothes and shoes and turn off the alarm and get the garage door opener and turn on the mini-TV, tuned to the weather, out in the shelter.

I go back in the house and issue terse little monosyllabic answers to my husband's questions and take another look at the TV and gather up the important stuff and go wake the elder daughter and grab the flashlights and put new batteries in one of them and go out to look at the sky and go back in and go re-wake the elder daughter and go upstairs to get the twins.

Panic! Loathing! Fear! These are the things issuing from my children. The oldest one isn't freaking out openly, but I can see it in her eyes, along with something new: weariness. It isn't that she's weary because it's the middle of the bloody night; rather, she's sick of being hustled out of some lovely dream during a sound sleep in her warm bed to be shrieked and jerked into the shelter, usually getting wet like a drowned rat in the process. I think she's the only one who notices the sirens aren't sounding, but she does me the colossal favor of not mentioning it.

The twins, on the other hand, are very nearly beside themselves. It's gotten so that Kieran doesn't want to go up to bed if it's raining outside, and Kendall is only too happy to follow big brother's lead in this. Together they gather up the cuties and put them in a big carryall bag next to their bedroom door, and each of them puts clothes at the end of the bed in case Mumma comes steaming up the stairs shouting to get up.

I've always lived in Oklahoma, and I've always loved it here ... EXCEPT for the tornadic storms. When I win that damn lottery, I'm going to build a house that is 100% "safe room" material, and then it won't matter about the forking sirens!!

"Get Up NOW, Kids"

There's a fun song about Oklahoma; maybe you've heard it? It comes from a musical, Oklahoma! The odd high school theatre group will get adventurous and perform it every once in a while ... I'm not sure which one this is, but they did a pretty good job: "Oklahoma! Finale" The musical really doesn't have much to do with the state as a whole, at least not any more (although water rights were one of the first chapters we did in realtor school). No, it's the first line of the title song that I want to focus on here:

Oklahoma! Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain!

Yeah ... wind. Chicago's known as the Windy City, but I think they must just have a better PR department, because anyone who's ever been here during a spring storm would *never* argue that Rodgers and Hammerstein had it wrong. I blogged on 5 March about the fun shelter-opening-by-necessity episode. Last night was a whole different dog.

By 9:00 the twins were in bed, elder daughter was slung back on the sofa with the laptop, the spousal unit was watching telly, and I was parked here doing a bit of catch-up ... when what to my wondering eyes should appear (wrong season, I know, but hang with me here) but the NewsChannel4 4-Warn Desktop Weather widget with many counties lit up in a variety of colors. (The widget pops up a map of the state ... each county is lit up a different color based on the worst thing that's happening there, and there's a legend at the top of the map, plus there's a little crawl along the bottom of the screen that replicates the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen ... you can click on any county to find out what warnings are on and when they expire, plus there's a link to a live radar ... it's TOTALLY nifty ... for the uninitiated (including the short-timer and the non-resident), here's a map: Counties in Oklahoma ... that should help, although you have to scroll down a bit). We're in the far-ish north-northwest bit of Oklahoma County, so anything that floats into far eastern Canadian County is pretty well guaranteed to nail us unless it blows out first (which isn't likely). I was watching as Caddo County, Canadian County, and Grady County went from orange (severe thunderstorm warning) to red (tornado warning) pretty quickly. It seemed fairly certain that we were next, which was very odd to me, as Oklahoma County was gray (meaning nothing's going on for that county - no watches, warnings, or otherwise).

The children hear the storm outside, and the younger two head into our bedroom to watch its progress on TV with us. (Elder daughter can sleep through most anything ... she's her mum's girl, that one!) Midnight comes and goes, and with it no sign of anything awful in our neck of the woods; the twins fall asleep in our bed, so I take them upstairs and tuck them in. Within five minutes, I'm tucked up in my own bed and drifting off to sleep, with the sounds of thunderstorm filtering in from the night outside.

Then the sound outside changes ... and not in a nice way.

Mark is still watching one of the three local network affiliates (NBC, ABC, CBS ... I wouldn't have Fox on unless all the others were dead and gone), and the voices start getting excited about a downdraft and inflow around a hook-echo denoting a circulation (this is tornado talk, and the weather kids will *never* explain it on TV, but if you watch enough of it, you get the idea). This new happening is just south of Mercy Hospital, not far from Quail Springs Mall, just around Lake Hefner Parkway. Mark nudges me and says, "It's us now, it's us, isn't that us?" He hops up out of bed and starts slamming his limbs into clothing as I open my eyes and see the circulation graphics on the TV screen to the accompaniment of Gary England (and bless THAT man's heart ... what are we all going to do when he retires? Perish the thought) ... then the sirens begin, and we know this time it's real.

Really, REALLY real ... wake the children real ... decide what's important enough to grab and leave the rest real.

From the bottom of our staircase, I can shout to reach all three darlings in their bedrooms, which is what I do next. My inner drill sergeant awakens and makes herself known: "KYMBER! KIERAN! KENDALL! OUT OF BED, CLOTHES ON, DOWNSTAIRS, RIGHT NOW!"

The children have heard me shout them out of bed plenty of times, but usually it's because they'll be late for school; I've *never* done it in the middle of the night with the sirens sounding. To their very great credit, they are at the front door with shoes on and jackets in hand, ready to go to the shelter, in record time. I've grabbed a pillow and flashlight, my bag, a hoodie, the house keys, the garage door opener, and the keys to Thumper and Skarlet, and we all head down to the shelter (except Mark, who's gone upstairs to get the bag of cuddly toys that was packed "just in case" but left on Kendall's bed in her haste). It turns out that the Mustang was *almost* pulled up far enough, but it was a bit of a squeeze to get in ... get in we did, though, and it was our luck that the sirens stopped as Mark was getting down the steps (not that anybody noticed but him).

The children did brilliantly. There was no crying, there were no shrieks, there was no panic (at the disco or otherwise, ha) ... there was just our family, performing as needs must when you live on the Oklahoma prairie. We got out of the shelter soaked, because the wind was whipping the rain as we were getting into the shelter, so everyone changed into dry clothes and went wearily back to bed.

Meanwhile, back at the cool desktop weather widget, the same counties that lit up last night are lighting up again right now.

:::sigh:::