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!!