I Will Not

     Went out of town to take a class, which takes place on Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. After class on Friday I went up to my room, turned on the TV, put on my night gown, and got under the covers.

     I had just found some local news to watch when, at straight up 10:00 PM a siren went off.  Oh, brother. In a few seconds it stopped and a voice came over a speaker I hadn't  noticed before, saying, "Attention, attention! An emergency has been reported in the building. Please leave your room, do not run, proceed to the exit, and leave the building," and then the alarm came on again, followed by the announcement and so on.

      I looked at the red speaker on the wall and said, "I will not," and I sat right in that bed.

     I heard my neighbors up and down the fourth floor of the hotel evacuating as directed. I wondered what the emergency was. I checked in with Intuition and got that it didn't feel like fire. The hotel was chock-full of families with children who had been running up and down the halls all afternoon, going to each others rooms and back and forth to the pool and whatnot. Could one of those little yahoos have thrown a fire alarm, maybe to see what would happen? No, it didn't  feel like kids.  I thought of that movie where the character throws the fire alarm in a hotel to prompt an evacuation so he can get somebody, and Intuition said, interesting, but not tonight. It said, look, go or don't go, it's up to you. I was already in my nightgown, cocooned in the bed. I wondered if they would search the rooms, find me there, scold me for not leaving as directed. I decided I would take my chances. The alarm continued on for about ten minutes.

     In about thirty minutes I heard activity on the floor. I thought, well, either it's the room by room search, or they've let people back in. When no one pounded on my door, I knew it was my neighbors returning to their rooms. Everybody got all settled in, I had just drifted off to sleep, and about an hour later the alarm went off again, second verse, same as the first. I stayed put, just like before. When that alarm shut off I went back to sleep and son-of-a-gun if another alarm didn't go off about an hour later! 

     The next morning I learned several things:

          1. The good news is you definitely wont sleep through one of those alarms. 

          2. Indeed, it wasn't any of the kids, nor a fire. It was some defect in the alarm system.

          3. The manager on duty that night promised that night would be complimentary, but the manager the next morning didn't know anything about it (interesting).

Surprise Tomato

Surprise Tomato

I’ve been building these little beds in my garden. The bricks are pretty heavy so I just do one a day when I’m doing them. I got to the third one today and discovered a tomato plant! I think it’s the one that I started indoors, and if so, it’s the only one of the plants that I started indoors that has survived. “Carrots love tomatoes,” so on the next day that’s good for planting (according to the moon) I’m going to plant carrots in the bed with this tomato.
 
A surprise tomato. It’s a small thing to be happy about, but I’m happy about it.

I'd seen on the news that Friday would be a day of meteorological instability, with probability of dangerous tornadoes, and that the storms would likely spark from just west of where I live (and head east). They predicted that the storms would likely begin to boil up about three to three thirty in the afternoon, the weather would really take off in the 5:30 to 6 pm drive-time, and probably last until nine or so.

5-31-2013 5:02 PM

About three PM I turned on my 4WarnMe App and clicked the [Watch Live] button. It showed a map like the one I had seen on the morning news. In a few minutes, here came Mike Morgan, saying that the cap was about to break and, oh, when it did, Katie bar the door! Then he went to some of his storm chasers, who said nothing had broken yet, but it looked like it would any minute.
The live broadcast ended and they went back to the map.

Probably about 3:30 - 3:45, Mike Morgan came back on live, and now the cap had broken and a huge anvil cloud was forming out near or just west of El Reno, which is about ten miles west of me. I knew this would develop quickly, and I did not want to be stuck in traffic on the highway when it rolled into town. I headed home about 4:30. Son Michael had already gotten the chickens in for me, so I just made a cursory walk-about and came inside to get ready.

I follow the progress and track of storms on an app called WeaterRadio with iMap Radar, which displays an interactive weather radar. I have a pin in mine to indicate where my house is, and I can display my current location, too. I have been following the progress and track of storms in this way for a few years, now, and have noticed a phenomenon. I have noticed that typically when weather (of any kind) is headed toward my place, it either veers off to one side or the other, goes around, weakens, or breaks up and goes around on each side sometimes reconvening once it passes. As bad as weather can be and often is, the full force of the worst of it simply doesn't bear down on my place.

This is not something to take for granted, though. Acknowledge, respectfully observe, but don't take for granted. And given the devastation of the Moore tornadoes just a week and a half earlier, and that the weatherman was saying weather conditions on this day were highly conducive to even more intense weather, I was certainly wary.

So I'm watching the radar on the WeatherRadio iMap, seeing where it is, where I am, hearing what the weatherman is saying, and talking to a friend on the phone. My friend said, "Oh, it's going to go north of you. It's not going to hit you at all. You'll be lucky to get rain out of this." I didn't argue with her, but it looked like she might be mistaken. Then the sirens went off. She offered to keep talking to me, but I have a plan and needed both hands to pull everything together and get tucked into my safe place, so I got off the phone.

About as soon as I got off the phone from my friend, my son Michael called. He said "Mom, you need to leave, you need to get out of there." While he's saying that, I can hear Mike Morgan on the TV saying, "People, get underground or get out of the way." I took another look at the iMap radar and started packing. Threw together a bag, put Cookie the Cat in her carrier, picked up Annie's leash, and headed to the car.

5-31-2013 About 7:00 PM

A right angle is the best way to travel away from a storm, and for this one, South was the way to go. Traffic was already thick but moving along pretty well, and I joined an exodus of cars headed south on Sara Road, south out of Mustang. I got about ten miles from home, checked the radar and pulled over to wait the storm out. My thinking was that the storm would play out, move on, and I could go back home. Silly me.

That storm just kept growing - continued to fire from its original location and growing to the east and the south. Pretty soon I had to move along to keep from being overtaken by the weather.

As I headed south again, I realized this was going to take longer than I had originally thought. I thought maybe I should go to my Dad's in Norman. I called to make sure someone was there, and thought about how I could route my trip. You can get to Dad's from where I was, but it's not the most efficient trip. There's a river to cross once or twice, and I-44, and Moore, and I-35, all on surface roads from where I was. Surface roads and heavy traffic, with an ever encroaching storm on this particular night. I tried to weave my way over. The storm was so heavy and so large that under the storm it was as dark as the darkest night you'd ever dread. Hard to see where you were, and hard to see how to get to where you wanted to go. Soon the storm was bearing down on Moore again, and then Norman, with me still miles away from Dad's, and in danger of getting caught in the weather. I could see I wasn't going to be able to get to Dad's.

I called to let them know I wasn't going to make it and found the first road I could, to go south. My evolving plan was to go far enough south to stay out of the storm, then circle back to the west, come up on the back side of the storm and follow it back home as it dissipated or moved on.

In this screen shot of the storm radar the point of the red pin is my house and the blue dot is where I was, about thirty miles from home. Thirty miles from home, and the storm was still freaking coming!

At about Blanchard I thought it might be good to top off the gas tank so I pulled into a gas station and reached for my purse. Couldn't find it! I have a cat and a dog and a bag ... no purse.  I got out and looked through everything in the car. Apparently in my excitement to make sure I got Annie the Dog and Cookie the Cat to safety, I plum forgot to pick up my purse! Well, I still had well over 200 miles on that tank of gas, so I was pretty sure I could make it home. Hoped so, anyway.


I continued south to Lindsay, checking the radar along the way.  When I got there it looked like I could circle back over to Chickasha; from there I would take Highway 81 back up to 152, to Clear Springs Road, and home. I anticipated that I might have to drive into some rain, but by the time I got back, the rain had moved on.

Bizarre were the lines of traffic, first heading south out of Mustang, then north on 81. As far as you could see, red tail lights in front of you, white headlights behind you. I'd been listening to the KFOR simulcast on the radio all evening so I'd heard plenty about impassable routes due to downed lines and local flooding. I saw areas dark from power outages, poles and signs knocked down and out of place, lots of broken trees, and water running across the road in several places. I saw water and heard water running in places you don't ordinarily see water. I saw a random fire hydrant laying in a drainage ditch, no idea where it came from or where it belonged. When I got home there was a line of traffic up my road as far as I could see, and water running over my driveway. I wasn't sure the gate would open, but it did, and I got home between ten and eleven.

Wow. My first choice is always to shelter in place, but if I ever have to evacuate again, I've had a practice run, and have an idea how to do it better next time.

Glad to be home, now, I can tell you that.

The Tornadoes of May 19-20, 2013

I was in downtown Oklahoma City on the third floor of the Dean A. McGee Eye Institute when the sirens went off.  Everyone in the building was directed to the basement. There was a young woman of about 20 or so, checking her smart phone, saying, "My cousin says it's in Newcastle. My cousin says it's in Moore. That's so far from here. Why do we have to go to the basement?" She was born and raised Las Vegas, Nevada, with a surprisingly sheltered upbringing, and had certainly never experienced anything like this before. She really didn't understand what the big deal was all about. I just said, "Tornadoes travel, sometimes pretty quickly. Better safe than sorry."

The next morning when I saw her I said, "Did you watch any TV last night?" Tears in her eyes, she said "Oh my God, yes! How awful!" She was clearly shaken. I said, "So you understand, now, why everyone gets so excited when the sirens go off?" She certainly does.

South Oklahoma City is my old stomping grounds, and I went to high school in Moore. The storm tracked less than a mile from my first husband's house, and even closer to the homes of some of my other extended family. I am personally acquainted with at least two families who lost their homes and everything but their lives and whatever they could grab and carry to safety as they fled the storm. There's a few folks I haven't been able to speak with yet, but I haven't seen them in the obituaries, and I have news of some of them via Facebook.

(Deep sigh) I'm going to go check on the chickens now.

Down for the Weekend

We have a little metal oscillating fan in my office at work, and I think something is a little out of round because it makes quite a racket when we use it. The other day when we had a little splash of warm weather and wanted to use the fan, I set it on the carpeted floor in hopes it would be less noisy.

It was slightly less noisy. We used it a couple of days, and then the weather cooled off. I didn't trouble myself to move the fan, because we knew it would warm up again in a few days.

We're always thinking a few days ahead at work. The first thing we have to do is make sure "tomorrow's" charts are done, and we work on the next day's charts, and so on. Every day is busy, but certain days are extra busy clinic days, with a heavier load of charts to do. Any given Tuesday, for example, might have twice as many appointments as, say a Friday.  It was Thursday and we were working on the last of Friday's charts, looking forward to getting those done so we could start on Monday's and hopefully get enough ahead to start on charts for Tuesday.

 

Jimmy John's delivers, and we'd ordered lunch in so we could work through. I had just finished a hefty stack of charts and I got up to band that giant stack of charts together and move them to the "finished" place. When I got up, though, somehow I got tangled up in that fan. In the process of trying to get untangled I lost my balance, and in the process of trying to regain my balance, became more unbalanced, almost fell, caught myself on a chart cart, and twisted the heck out of my left knee. If the chart cart hadn't been there for me to grab I would've ended up all the way down on the floor. If it, being a wheeled conveyance, hadn't been in the corner like it was, the whole story might've had a much worse outcome than it did. 

 

Knee hurting like all get-out, standing on one leg, I somehow found my chair and plopped back into it. Scared a good ten years off my co-worker. She went for help and people started piling into our little office, including one of the doctors. He asked some questions about does this hurt, does that hurt,  and if I had an Orthopedic surgeon of choice. I do, but I don't know if he's still practicing, or if he's even still alive. I told Dr. H. that all my favorite doctors are old now. He said he's old too, and we laughed about that. Someone appeared with a wheelchair and I got a ride in the wheelchair to the hospital across the street. We must have looked like quite a crew, two women pushing another woman in a wheelchair across the street like that.

We entered through the Outpatient entrance on the south side of the building and threaded our way through the building to the Emergency Room  on the north side of the building. ER Waiting was full of folks I suspect may not have come in if it hadn't been so cold outside. I wouldn't say they weren't ill, but I got the feeling that several of them might have tolerated their dis-ease without spending the day in ER if the weather had been better.

Fortunately I didn't have to wait as long as I thought I would, and the good news is that nothing is torn or broken as far as they could tell. The knee "looks" perfectly normal from the outside, with little to no pain as long as I keep still and don't stress or twist it at all. 

 

Mike and Monica came to drive me home and help me get my car home, and then they brought my recliner and twin bed downstairs so I can stay on one floor. I can walk well enough with a cane (Thank you Steve for the nice cane), but I don't dare try to go up and down the stairs right now. I already feel tons better than this time yesterday, but I can sure tell when I've moved around "too much" (like now). And while driving wouldn't be at all difficult, getting into and out of my rather tall Honda Pilot seems a little daunting yet. I can't even think about that today. I'm hoping to enjoy enough recovery to go back to work on Monday.

 

So, there you have it. Twisted knee, down for the weekend.  

 

The oscillating fan, by the way, is back on the windowsill, off the floor. We'll just deal with the noise when we're hot.

Is Everybody In?

We learned long ago that chickens who don't come in at night don't last long, and it really only takes once. If you want to keep your chickens, you need to make sure they go in at night and lock them up against predators. My chickens live in a very nice chicken house that my beloved late husband built. It has an attached, enclosed yard with a sturdy metal roof over all. I don't let my chickens out every day, but when I do, I make sure to see them all in, come dusk. 

Sunday was a beautiful Oklahoma spring day, so that afternoon I let the chickens out. As the day came to a close, I went out to see them in. I counted them: four barred rock roosters, two banty roosters, two mixed roosters, five red hens and two barred rock hens. Except there was only one barred rock hen. I counted them again, four, two, two, five - where is that other barred rock hen? I closed up the chicken house so they wouldn't get back out while I looked for that one hen and began my search.

Barred rock chickens' feathers are colored, black and white, in such a way that the birds appear to be striped, like bars of color, black and white, hence their name, Barred Rock. They are striking birds. In addition, the black and white striped configuration provides excellent camouflage. I looked and looked and looked for that hen. Wherever she was, she was well hidden. I prayed a blessing on her and came on in my own house for the night.

Later on, as usual, I let Annie the dog out one more time before we went to bed. When I went to call her in, she didn't come. I stepped outside and called again. I heard her tags rattle so I called again, but then I heard a sound I know to be the cry of a hen in distress. 

I will digress here to say that I have never let Annie out loose when the chickens are out because she gets so excited I feared she might "play" too roughly with them. Annie has brought me more than one little deceased creature - mice, frogs, turtles, even a squirrel - that she has caught and just "played" to death. I do not want this to happen to my chickens. When I heard this hen squalling, I nearly panicked.

I grabbed the flashlight and, in my night shirt and fuzzy house shoes, ran toward the sound in my fuzzy house shoes yelling "Annie! Sit! Annie, sit!" Annie had "treed" the hen in a corner between some hog wire and the chain-link fence. The hen had tried to go through the chain-link, and was stuck and calling for help. 

One very good thing about Annie is that she does sit when I tell her to, so I most emphatically told her to "Sit!" while I extracted the frightened hen from her predicament. I carried the hen into the chicken house and gently set her in one of the nesting boxes. She tolerated this very well and didn't kick up a bit of fuss, which was good because chickens are like toddlers - one cries, they all start crying.  Her being quiet saved us all from a houseful of agitated chickens. The next morning I couldn't even tell which hen it had been. Really, it was as if nothing unusual had happened at all. Funny birds.

Annie the Dog

Steve and I got Annie the Dog from the El Reno Animal Shelter In June of 2011. She's a little red Shepherd mix gal, and quite a gal. The vet estimated she was about nine months old when we got her, so we count her birthday as October 2010, currently just over two years old. She has come a long way. My beloved husband went to Heaven in October of 2011, a terrible loss to me, and Annie misses him, too.

We thought we'd let her sleep with us, but she wouldn't come up the stairs, which turned out to be okay because she was such a character to EAT everything she could get her mouth on! I always warn visitors, "You better pick that up if you want to keep it - Annie will eat it!" So upstairs turned out to be a haven, a safe place, where you could take things and not worry about Annie getting them.

Hmmm, until today, maybe. Son Michael and I had gone on an errand and when we got back, Annie was UPSTAIRS!  She seemed a little startled, reminding me of someonw getting caught red-handed and acting like they didn't know anything about it - "What? Where am I? How did this happen?" We talked her to the top of the stairs and she managed to come downstairs under her own steam. Mike and I went upstairs for a status check, and it looked like the only thing she's done was slick up Cookie's (one of the cats) food dish. While I was up there Annie came BACK upstairs, but then ran back down when she saw me see her, funny little dog. Of course Cookie is NOWHERE to be found, and I don't know when I'll ever see her if Annie starts sleeping with me, but I'm pretty sure Cookie'll get over it eventually.

I guess we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'll have to be extra diligent to keep Cookie's (upstairs) cat box cleaned out and find a place up somewhere for Cookie's food. Never a dull moment, huh?