Being scared of scary things is normal.

I am afraid of tornadoes. Mostly, because they pick up houses and kill people.

So when I awoke yesterday to the Oklahoma meteorologists telling me that tornadoes were going to circumcise our state at 3 o clock, I was a little unnerved. I had feelings of hatred for anyone who wasn't a little unnerved and my insides felt like I ate some bad turkey gravy.

I came to work and attempted normalcy. I typed some stuff, picked up the phone and said stuff, counted stuff, etc. But my mind was on one thing and one thing only: How to keep myself and the people whose lives I enjoy away from a giant spinning satan wedge of shitstorm.

To make myself feel better, I stupidly watched the weather online like some type of porn fiend whose unattractive wife was out of town. When my boss came out to show me how to use my new webcam for conference calls, my cankles started sweating as he closed my doppler radar. When I told him I was in hell, he laughed for a good six minutes. Oh Mary's so funny and silly!


I decided I would use my lunchbreak to go get the little munchers and bring them back to work with me. I stupidly thought this would take my panicness from a 10 to a 6. Once I had them in my car and we were heading back to my work I found I wasn't shaking or cussing any less. This was a problem. Now adding on to the nauseating fear and known pending torturous doom, I had two mildy cute children who wanted annoying things like water and reassurance.

I had the plan to keep my branch open until the tornado was close enough that I could justify closing it and running like an ostrich to my car without any shoes. Adrian was pretty tough for a six year old whose mom was acting and looking like Courtney Love. He would occasionally remind me he was scared and finally sighed and made the blatant obvious statement, "I hate today." I hugged him and told him I was more scared and to stop being so self-centered.

Just kidding.

When my employer finally told us to leave, I was stuck. I was going to go to the public tornado shelter in the city I work, but I had been told it was full. I could not go home because there were tornadoes joyfully frolicking all around my neighborhood. My husband had already called and informed me that our house would probably be gone and I should go ahead and just start crying, heaving, and vomiting. My ex-husband called me to check on me, and told me to come to his parent's house. They had a storm shelter and his dad had vacuumed out the spider webs and scorpions, so it was in tip-top form for his ex-wife and her children.

When I started driving south towards their home, I was trying to listen to the radio so I could hear exactly where the tornadoes were, but it kept interrupting the weatherman for a national alert from the weather service. Let me explain how frustrating this was. I had a man in a bedazzled tie telling me EXACTLY where the tornado was. I had a man in a helicopter above the tornado telling said man in tie where it was going and what time I would die if I was in that spot. These men had radar they were reading to me about what kind of injuries I could expect to have to my body of sternum. They interrupt this wonderful information for "CHHHHRRRRRR CHHHRRRRRRR BEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEP this.....is....the.....national.....weather.......station......in......norman......oklahoma....at.....4:24pm.........the.....
national.....weather......service.....issued.....a....thunderstorm.....warning......for.....the......following....counties....
......camadoromak.....giradelphia.........kankangomoby......CHHHRRRRRRR BEEEEEEPPP CHHHRRR BEEEEEP...." Really, asshat? What was my first clue that there was a thunderstorm? The tornado sirens going off, the giant chunks of ice putting dents in my Mercedes, or the fact I was desperate enough for safety that I was DRIVING TO MY EX HUSBAND'S HOUSE IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CITY?

While I am on the subject, is there any noise in the United States of America that is more suicidal than the national weather service notification? It sounds like a busy signal and a mutant alien had a premature baby and it hasn't been fed. And we're listening to it in 1945 over a transistor radio. With a hearing aid. That's turned up too loud.

There are cars everywhere headed south away from the tornadoes. I am screaming at everyone what ridiculous dumbasses they all are for driving, even though I am behind the wheel in an SUV full of kids, pillow pets, bottled water, and poor decisions. I finally get there without incident and we run inside, where the house smells like cookies and homemade bread.

My ex-mother in law has made cookies and grilled cheese for the kids. I'm surprised she hadn't called in a caterer. It was so sweet. I had trouble being appreciative because I wanted to fast pitch my kids into the shelter and raid their medicine cabinet for something with the words "may cause drowsiness" or "do not mix with alcohol".

The kids had each taken one bite of their food when the sirens went off. We ran down into the shelter where my ex MOL insisted on laying out blankets for me and the kids to sit on. She also made her husband go back into the house, in the middle of a tornado, to get the kids a DVD player and some cookies. The sirens went off non-stop for over an hour. I was in a 6 foot space with my two children, my ex-husband, his mother and father, and some bananas and cookies. At one point a giant piece of hail somehow got through our breathing vents and fell onto Adrian's lap. You would have thought that piece of hail was a sinning ball of cow dung on fire the way he and I jumped and screamed.

When it finally quieted down we came out to no damage other than a lot of broken tree branches and leaves everywhere. Considering how other people in the state were hit, what we went through was nothing. My home and my families homes were unharmed. The only thing that was in a state of injury was my soul. Somehow, after we got home and my husband bathed and put the kids to bed, a hot bath, a muscle relaxer and American Idol even cured that injury. Gosh. Tornadoes are assholes.