I woke up early this morning and realized we were indeed getting rain along with thunder and lightening. So Rob Nucatola was right again. I laid there and couldn't get back to sleep for some reason. Mr. Moon was having no trouble. He was snoring but that doesn't bother me. I'm the one who snores the most and loudest, no contest. But he'd forgotten to turn his phone to silent and he kept getting messages which pissed me off. He's about half deaf so the alerts weren't bothering him.
And then he got a tornado warning alert and that really woke me up. It woke him up too and he got up. I've never met a person in my life who can go from dead asleep to up and at it like that man can. It's like there's no transition at all. He goes from one state to another in a second. But I was not ready to get up and so I stayed in bed and was just about asleep when a giant clap of thunder sounded and shook the house and my body leapt to attention and I said, "Fuck it," and got up too.
The power had gone out but the generator was on. It was raining pretty hard and still storming but nothing crazy. We still had internet and it wasn't until I was perusing Facebook that I realized that Tallahassee and parts of the surrounding counties had been hit by possibly four tornados and it was bad. As we say around here, "Things got tore up."
I mean trees down everywhere, buildings demolished, roofs gone. Lauren had just gotten to work on the southwest side of Tallahassee when a tornado went right over the Publix where she works there and the pictures she posted looked so scary. She was fine, thank all the powers that be.
Something like 80,000 people were without power. Lines down everywhere. So much damage and devastation. I've only heard of one death and it's hard to believe that was the only one.
And here I was, moaning and bitching because my husband forgot to silence his phone which prevented me from sleeping.
I had no idea! I haven't heard reports of this much damage since Hurricane Kate in 1985. And it was just a few weeks ago that we had that flood.
Oh man. Yeah- ignore climate change after this, Ron Desantis.
Our friend Tom's trailer was pretty much smashed by a fallen tree. Glen spent hours over there this morning trying to get him to make other arrangements for, uh, living, but Tom's not having it. Long story there and he is coming for supper but he's not going to spend the night.
And so what did I do today?
Same things I always do. Which felt so odd. People all around me with their homes damaged and cars smashed and power out and here I am in our old house, the power back on, hardly a branch down in the yard. So weird. Jessie and May still don't have power but everyone is safe. Schools were closed, obviously, and many, many businesses too.
Since there was little else I could do, I decided to make more room in the pantry for my hopefully great abundance of canned beans and whatever else I can manage to can or pickle this summer. That of course led to getting rid of some things in kitchen cabinets and organizing the pantry. I can't say that I was very successful but I made progress.