Okay, so I’m trying really hard to not be that girl.
You know, that girl who freaks out when bad weather presents and I’m home alone with a couple of mutts and there’s no basement and I live behind a trailer park.
I’ve never been that girl before. I mean, I’m a military spouse. We’re built Ford tough. And we’re used to being alone. But those storms from a couple of weeks ago and then the ones that blew through Alabama last night and are currently swirling in the skies overhead kind of made me realize how much we’re all just sitting here all vulnerable and exposed like those little moles that pop out of the holes in that game at the fair and we’re just hoping we don’t get whacked on the head with a rubber mallet.
Or a tornado.
The tall, skinny pine trees in my back yard look like giant blades of grass blowing around in the wind.
There’s no rain, and that somehow makes it a little scarier.
We’ve been told the storms have weakened significantly since their run through Alabama, and we shouldn’t expect to see anything that we saw before.
But the thing is, before is still now.
I took these photos from a moving vehicle a couple of days ago:
Yep, that’s our Lowe’s Home Improvement store.
Lowe’s again.
Huge trees just snapped.
This used to be a nice little neighborhood.
Wow.
Nature is powerful and awesome.
And sometimes it wants to make sure we remember that.
A tough-but-fun one filled with old friends visiting from out-of-town, drinking lots of beer, a 2-year-old’s birthday party, a 19 hour power outage, a power outage during a 2-year-old’s birthday party, drinking lots more beer because it’s good beer and it’s about to get warm and because you’re at a 2-year-old’s birthday party, and oh yeah – the power is out.
It was a little like this:
Yes, the mother of the 2-year-old could very well kill me for posting this photo. But she doesn’t read this blog. And if you do read this blog and you happen to know her, let’s just forget about this little incident and think of the greater good. I think some people could really use some smiles today, you know? Thank you for your cooperation.
But really, electricity or no, the party was a lot of fun.
As far as I’m concerned, any time cake and beer come together is a good time.
Little did we know, things like this were happening not too far away:
Lowe’s store in Sanford, NC. Photo by: Ted Richardson, Associated Press
This is definitely not Kansas. It’s the Lowes where I shop regularly. I pass it on my way to work. Thanks to the store manager who ushered people to the back of the store, none of the 150-some employees and customers were injured while Nature, during her epic tantrum, hurled their cars like so many Hot Wheels at the front of the building.
I could go on.
A dear friend who lives very near the destruction said I should come document it with photos. I was tempted. Very tempted. But the thing is, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to stand there and freeze a moment of someone’s devastation. A stranger’s pain. It could’ve been someone I serve at the bar. Someone I get mad at for driving too slow. They don’t need me there now. At least not in that way.
I’m happy my friends are safe.
But I’m sad for the people who aren’t, because while I don’t know them, they could’ve been my friends at some point. But now they won’t. You know?
Also, I had a dream last night. I wrote it down at 5:00 this morning because it was so vivid, and I didn’t want the fog of consciousness to later make it seem less significant than it did at 5:00 this morning.
It could just be that anything that happens at 5:00 in the morning seems significant.
I don’t know.
But I’m pretty sure I’m going to share it with you later today. It was one of those dreams where people from different facets of my life appear in little cameos throughout. It makes no sense now, but it made perfect sense in the dream.
Picture Dorothy waking up from the land of Oz, saying, “You were there. And you!”
And that’s how this was. All over the place. A glimpse of what goes on inside my head.
Yet there seemed to be a point – one I can’t grasp. There’s the very real possibility that sharing it might change how you think of me, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take if someone could shed some light on what it actually means.
IF it means anything.
It could just mean I had too much beer and cake this weekend.
So far, the rainy season in Costa Rica has been, uh, rainy. Really rainy.
In fact, with a recent line of tropical storms stopping by to dump inches of the stuff on us every day for the past week, the locals are calling this one of the worst rainy seasons they’ve seen in while.
And while Costa Rica’s storms are beautiful in their own way, the constant, monotonous downpour has left everyone in the office feeling a little waterlogged.
So it was a truly joyous occasion when an unexpected visitor showed up to join us on our walk to work this morning.
Sun! Glorious sun!
It broke through the low ceiling of clouds and a chorus of angels began singing.
Okay, actually it was us singing–and badly–but still.
We shamelessly belted out our anthems of appreciation:
Blue skiiiies smiling at meeee.
I’m walking on sunshiiiiine!
Here comes the sun, doo do doo dooo.
As we walked, we turned up our faces, spread our arms wide and basked in it like little flowers.
Even our shadows came out to see what all the commotion was about.
They were pretty happy, too.
And sweat ‘staches be damned, the hot rays felt oh so nice on our pasty skin.
