Trying to Avoid a Trip to Oz

If you're an Oklahoma resident (past or present), you'll understand.

If you aren't one yet but could wind up being one at some future point, take heed.

If you've never had the privilege of living here, and Fate never determines that you are sufficiently worthy (which is cool, we won't hold it against you ... not everyone can be Okie ... the world needs Texans too ... although no one is yet sure just why ... heh), then this will serve as a nice piece of light fluffy prose at which you can smile and nod and perhaps even chuckle a bit before promptly forgetting it as you turn your attention to the broader scheme of your own existence.

Anyhow, if you weren't here Sunday evening, then too bad for you ... you really missed a stellar time.

We begin, as always, with a bit of background.

Several years ago we installed an in-ground tornado shelter in the garage. (We looked at safe rooms too, but they cost at least 3x as much and required what promised to be some fairly major construction.) It's one of those one-piece molded jobs that you see at the fair, the kind that you just drive the car over. We put it near the garage door, because our house is L-shaped, with the short bit being the garage and the front door being in the angle, and it's easier to walk out the front door into the garage than it is to scamper through the whole house and go out through the laundry room. Trigger (the convertible Mustang) parks over the door to the shelter, although he's not supposed to be parked right on top of it. However, Trigger usually only gets pressed into service once or twice a year, spending the rest of the year with a flat battery and at least one matching tire. Whoever used him last didn't pull him up very far ... no big at the time, but GREAT BIG as it turned out later.

We hadn't yet "opened" the shelter for this year (i.e., sweeping out the assortment of insects that congregate there from the end of one tornado season to the beginning of the next). It's one of those things that's on your Round Tuit list, because hey, it's only 2 March and it's been really cold outside except for the completely gorgeous last two days (first warning sign ... warm air + cold front = warm air rises and cold air drops and winds up making a fun sideways cyclone sort of thing which eventually sits up on its end from the cloud and drops down toward the earth) ... and then the sirens start.

It's pitching down rain in buckets (with said rain whipping and twirling and blowing in every direction, natch), and Trigger was parked on top of the shelter. First I have to find the keychain (I have one boasting a key collection that puts most prison wardens to shame) and the garage door opener (because it should be on the damn hall table but things look a far sight different when my innards have turned to jelly because the sirens are sounding) ... click the door opener to open the door (but it doesn't work until the fourth go, causing me to be sure that I am going to die today) ... squeeze into the teensy little space between Trigger and Skarlet in the garage and try to get into Trigger without door-dinging Skarlet ... test the two Ford keys to see which one is Trigger's, which is difficult because my hands are shaking like anything ... turn the key one click ... put the Mustang in neutral ... shout at Mark (who has FINALLY got himself outside to help me) to push it toward the west wall so as to be able to access the shelter entry portal ... throw the Mustang in park (and ignore the stupid grindy noise because it won't matter at all that I've stripped the gearbox if we're all dead) ... open the shelter ... go down into the shelter and squish all the spiders and crickets and other squatters, and knock down as many fantastic examples of arachno-architecture as I can find so that the children don't fuss ... find the little bitty TV that we keep in the garage for just this kind of thing ... try to remember how to turn the damn thing on ... tune in Mike Morgan because Gary England has the night off ... prepare to herd everyone down ... sirens stop ... go back into the house, put down bag and flashlights and other necessary things that have been snatched up (passports, foreign currency, file of birth certificates and marriage licenses and property deeds and car titles and other stuff that really should be in a safe deposit box in a vault that will withstand this shit anyhow) ... the sirens start again ... curse a blue streak ... repeat above procedure.

It all sounds like a truly awful sitcom episode, doesn't it?!?! It was a dark and stormy night. Car is parked on top of garage-floor shelter. Car has dead battery and flat tire. Add three frightened children plus one near-panicked Oklahoma-born mum plus one English transplant who isn't afraid of this weather because damnit, he's English, and by-God, we survived the Blitz and we'll survive this (and never mind that he was born 27 years after the Blitz ended). Hilarity ensues.

I would have been laughing my ass off if not for the mortal danger of it all.

Epilogue: the temperature dropped like a rock all Sunday night, and Monday morning was dead cold with a very low wind-chill index. While I was in the kitchen getting breakfast for the twins and a cuppa for Mark (elder daughter K.C. had already hopped on the bus), there was snow blowing about. It's been chilly for the last two days. Kieran and Kendall have learned at school that "if March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb" ... please, let Granny's old saying be true this time!!