...or lack thereof. So, all week, we've been bracing for these horrible storms. The weather people called them, "the worst storms in years," which says a lot considering...two? years ago, I think it was, it seemed as though we had a tornado every other day. Believe me, I lived right under a tornado siren at the time and spent much of the spring wondering if we were under attack from Nazi Germany. Anywho, I prepared: got the dog's leashes together in case we're all blown away together (Sadie might fit in a little basket, but Gabby sure as hell won't follow me down any yellow brick road without some sort of structure), and decided my bedroom closet, which goes up under my stairs, would be the safest place to "hunker down." It started raining last night and into this morning, and when I woke up, it was awfully dark. I got out and ran a few errands and when I got home, tried to get some work done before the big storm hit. After the whole having-to-get-a-new-laptop thing, I am not taking any chances with this one getting struck by lightning, and I learned the hard way last summer...and fall... that this house isn't exactly friendly when it comes to electrical things being plugged in during storms, no matter how many surge protectors I have.
Around sometime in the middle of the day, it began to rain and thunder and I figured that was it. I shut down and unplugged everything and put my rugs outside (God's shampooing them for me - probably not a great idea, but we'll see) and braced myself for the "worst storms in years." About five minutes later it stopped. Fast forward a an hour or so, my mom came over to bring the dogs some new toys she'd bought them and I did some more work, and then it began to storm again. Again, I unplugged everything and waited. While I waited, I decided a nap was in order because I stayed up until 3:00 AM, watching "Lovely Bones" last night (hated it - book was sooooo much better).
A while later, after a dream about haunted Christmas decorations (no, really), I got up and noticed it was fairly sunny outside. Had the storms passed? Not so much. Just as soon as I'd plugged my laptop in, it's thundering again. I unplug everything, it stops. I plug it all back in, it starts back up. It's driving me nuts! Finally, I did what anyone waiting for "the worst storms in years" would do, I decided to fry some chicken.
This is perhaps the moment when Sadie, the new puppy, became afraid of inclimate weather. First of all, a huge clap of thunder sounds out of nowhere and is followed by a streak of electricity shooting through my living room, right by her. She freaked. She's already barking every time it thunders anyway, because she thinks it's someone outside, but she wasn't really scared. I went around unplugging everything - again - and forgot all about my chicken, which begins to smoke and in turn, the smoke alarm sends the most horrible, piercing sound through the house. At this point, poor Sadie looks as though she's going to have a heart attack between the near-miss with the lightning, the smoke alarm, and the now-super-loud thunder. I tend to the chicken (which catches on fire, no joke) and start cooking a second piece (my frying pan is about the size of my hand) and find Sadie hiding in the bathroom. By the time I'm able to coax her out, the smoke alarm starts blaring again and she darts into the bedroom and hides under the covers.
At some point, while I'm tending to this second piece of chicken, she makes her way to the door, wanting to go outside. The storm has calmed a bit and we're still working on potty-training, so I'm not taking any chances. I let her out like normal and put a third piece of chicken on the stove. I'm cleaning up and playing a game on my laptop, when I notice it's starting to rain really hard again, so I step outside to check on the dogs. Gabby is sitting on the porch (because the dog who loves to swim hates rain?) and Sadie is nowhere to be found. I call her and call her and she doesn't come, so I come back into the house and search all of the potential hiding places. No Sadie anywhere. She doesn't usually go far when she's outside (unless Gabby's with her) so I start to panic. Needless to say, my third piece of chicken has gone to hell.
I put on a bra (never know who you'll run into out in the woods) and some shoes and head out, calling for the dog, as it starts to rain harder and thunder again. I look everywhere and am just about to come back inside and call my parents to make sure she hasn't run the half a mile or so to their house and I see her just sitting out in the middle of the woods behind my house like she's lost. I scooped her up and brought her inside and dried her off and held her for a while and she passed out on the sofa.
I go back to the stove and attempt to salvage the last piece of chicken and well, it's not so much as thundered since we came back inside. I ended up plugging everything back in - seriously, how am I supposed to entertain myself with a laptop or TV - and working/playing on Twitter.
We're under a tornado watch until 3:00 AM (it's 1:30 now). I just flipped my TV to the local ABC affiliate and it looks like there's some nasty weather coming out of Alabama, but it's a county or two north of me. I'm not going to complain, I've seen the damage these storms can do, but geez, I'm a little bored with the "worst storms in years."
