Not Me! Monday, Tornado Edition

Welcome to Not Me! Monday. Created by MckMama, it's a chance for all moms to stand up and proudly declare all of their "shortcomings"... by vehemently denying them. (Head on over to her blog for hundreds more Not Me! Monday posts)


Well, I, for one, certainly did NOT have an interesting week this first week that the girls were in town for the summer.

For instance, last Wednesday, I was not completely unaware of the huge, amazing, dangerous storm warnings, and my first clue was not hearing the tornado/storm sirens going off at the end of our block. When Kibibi freaked out at the term "tornado siren" and asked what it meant, my darling husband would never be so insensitive (and inaccurate) as to say that those sirens are used "to indicate a potential for rotation", giving his oldest daughter a heart attack. [fyi they are set off any time there is severe weather, not just tornadoes.]

I am certainly not paranoid or freaked out by tornados, so if he had done that, I would not have been irrationally annoyed with him for freaking her out, thus causing me to have to calm her down when I was trying not to be freaked out myself.

[Editor's note: i tried writing this next sentence in the funny not me! style but it got so convoluted i had to change it. Anyhow... I'm still feeling major guilt that I was SO much more concerned about Kibwana's safety than any of the rest of us, that my solution for Kibibi's anxiety was to drag his playpen to the safest part of the house, give her a flashlight just in case we lost power, and set her to entertaining him. On the one hand, I wasn't taking the storm warning seriously, but my natural paranoia broke in and prompted me to put him in a safe place anyway just in case. On the other hand, I had Kati in the kitchen helping me finish dinner, and I wasn't concerned about that. sigh. stepparenting fail I guess :(...]

So yeah, I would never find myself putting my natural child's safety above that of my stepkids or my husband. Not me.

ANYhow, back to my totally imaginary story.

My idiot, I mean CHARMING, husband would not go outside in the front yard when the wind gusts visibly seemed to be reaching 60+ miles per hour. And if he did, I'm such a sweet angel, I would never shrewishly screech at him about it, right?

After the storm had completely passed, the still-freaked-out Kibibi then claimed she could have seen an electrical explosion thing that had happened during an ice storm last year, but which she had heard about and never seen when it really happened. I did NOT roll my eyes and sigh heavily and sarcastically at this (because if it was happening now, you would not question whether or not it was happening).Therefore, I was not interrupted mid-eye-roll when Col opened the garage door to prove it was her imagination, and saw that A JUNGLE HAD SPROUTED IN MY DRIVEWAY OUT BACK!

Nope, no jungles here. No 2' and 3'-diameter trees fallen on our eaves and all around our car and my FIL's van. No interrupting of Kati's birthday party while Col and his dad took hacksaws to tree branches to determine the status of the cars underneath two trees worth of branches.

If such a thing had happened, and my car survived without a single scratch, I would have been grateful every second, and I would NEVER have had a moment's worth of regret that we missed the chance to total it and get out from under the payments so that we could afford to get a van that we need so badly.

And finally, if all this had happened, and Col was outside in the rain the next day, cutting off branches with a hacksaw, I would never, EVER have taken the baby outside and let him play in the tree debris and mud in the alley, barefoot.


STICKS, MOMMY! OMG STICK HEAVEN!!!!!

STICK STICK STICK STICK STICK STICK STIIIIIIIIIIICK!

(PS for the record - no, the electrical thing was all in her imagination. yes, it probably was a tornado; the damage was extreme throughout the neighborhood and rotation -but no funnel- was seen by one of my neighbors. yes, we did go back in and finally open presents. and weirdly enough, no, we had no idea the trees had fallen down until we opened the garage door. everyone in the neighborhood remarked on how all the crazy fallen trees and limbs happened without them knowing about it, without making crazy noises. and i don't think any houses were majorly damaged, although we had some damage to our garage roof/eave and stuff like that.)

(Above: First thing next morning - for size comparison, that white flat thing at center left is my garage door (with a city trash can in front of it)

Below: after Col got some of it cleared away)