Tornadoes came through Durham, and I think it's my fault.

This unscheduled Thursday post is brought to you by Durham's CRAZY weather this week. Do you remember how I wrote this post only a few short weeks ago, commenting on how Durham basically never gets tornadoes? Ahem. I do believe I jinxed us.

The truth is that Durham rarely ever gets tornadic activity; we're east of the mountains, so a lot of severe weather peters out once it gets to west NC. We're also far enough inland that hurricanes don't generally do too much damage. Our boring landscape here in the Piedmont (what our area of North Carolina is called) actually insulates us from a lot of undesirable weather.

Except when it doesn't. Like this week.

I actually was unaware that we had weather headed our way. It's been overcast and rainy for several days, so I'd gotten used to the dreary weather (and the increased intensity of my never-ending headache). I did notice the temperature and humidity yesterday morning when Claire and I headed out to run some errands. Having grown up in North Alabama (Tornado Alley) and gone to school/lived and worked in West Tennessee (Tornado Alley) and had a traumatic, life-changing encounter with a tornado, I am very attuned to temperature and humidity changes in February-March-April. It has only happened a few times while living in Durham, but they've never developed into severe weather. Not so yesterday. It was warm and sticky-clammy, and I did not like it.

During Claire's nap time, I tried to nap a little myself, but I had to get up partway through to check my blood sugar and never fell back to sleep. That turned out to be a blessing, because I'm not sure I would have heard my phone's severe weather notification otherwise. I think it said something like "Tornado Warning: Seek Shelter Immediately."

WHOA. DEFCON situation.

I moved extremely fast for a pregnant woman. Claire was still napping, so I spent about 3 minutes gathering items for my tornado bag and prepping the coat closet as well as I could. Did I mention that Brad was at Duke? Because he was. That is basically Worst Case Scenario for me. Anxiety over tornadoes is still alive and well in my heart, so I like to have all of my people with me. But, you play the cards you're dealt. 

First things first: Tennis Shoes. Always my first move. 

Secondly: Grab a bag and fill it with essentials. I filled my bag with a small box of valuables, some cash, my glucose testing paraphernalia, medications, a phone charger (oh, and my phone was only 60% charged. How nice.), a few clementines, a banana, some string cheese, a water bottle, and my purse (which had wallet, i.d. and keys). I also grabbed a few pillows, a handful of pull-ups, a pack of wipes, and a few toys.

Thirdly: Remove bulky and potentially-dangerous-if-they-fall-on-you-during-a-storm items from the closet. I hauled out the vacuum cleaner, a set of TV trays, a couple of boxes stored up on the shelves, and a bunch of other random-in-the-way items. 

I did all of that in less than 5 minutes and then sprinted (or whatever the pregnant equivalent is) up the stairs, took a deep breath to calm my nerves so I wouldn't scare Claire, and woke Claire up. I explained that there was some bad weather and that we were going to sit in the closet downstairs so that we could be safe (she likes to play "elevator" in there, so this wasn't an extremely odd concept to her). I made sure to grab her lovey and some shoes as we headed downstairs. She wasn't keen on wearing her shoes, but alas, it's a rule. I placated her with string cheese. I made sure the tv was on local weather and grabbed our emergency radio and lantern.

We were ready, friends.

And then the power went out. 

And then I discovered that both our radio and our lantern were dead. AWESOME.

So, my mom and Brad kept me posted with texts, and Bear and I ate snacks and sang songs for a looooong time. I also discovered that pregnant me does NOT fit well on the floor of our coat closet. I also did, what I consider, an admirable job of keeping my anxiety at bay so that Claire wouldn't catch it. I felt my insides constrict with every howl of the wind. A little bit of panic rose up in my chest every time rain beat against the windows. I mentally planned out how I would shield Claire if the wind broke through the house and it started crumbling around us. I'm sure my doctor would have been concerned about my blood pressure, had it been taken during the storm. My body physically reacts to severe weather, post-2008 tornado, and I'm starting think it always will.

Once we finally got the all-clear, we discovered that only half our street lost power (our half, of course). Weird. And that, to Claire, an hour of being forced to stay in the closet is akin to being stranded on a desert island for years. She needed to take off her shoes PRONTO. And she needed to run around and look out all of the windows. And she NEEDED to make our Lent lamb craft that I had told her we would make (you know, before the tornado came through). Thankfully, Brad got home as soon as he could, which calmed me down a lot. We ended up picking up barbecue sandwiches at the little restaurant on the corner and just hanging out until they got our power back up and running (which wasn't too long).

I found that watching the news in a place that rarely experiences tornadoes is very different than watching the news in a place that gets them more regularly. It seemed that even the meteorologists were taken aback. The anchors kept making comments like, "Having a tree fall on your house just seems unimaginable" and "Losing your home...that's just so life changing." I'm glad that severe weather is so rare around here that the anchors don't even know what to say (there aren't even tornado sirens in our part of town...yikes!), but it was just so weird to hear them sounding so unnerved and even a little confused. I'm accustomed to living in places where this kind of weather is not unusual, there are systems in place for dealing with it, and people know what to do (and generally take it seriously). Is this considered culture shock?

So, that was our mid-week excitement. We're fine. Our house and vehicles are fine. Our power is back. And- we know I can get tornado-ready in 5 minutes flat. These are all excellent outcomes.