Gone campin'

Courtesy of library.thinkquest.org.

Last week we had a night of really bad lightning, thunder, wind and raid come through our area. I get a little freaked out when it is lightning outside. I always have. This storm was truly unlike anything I have ever heard.

There were a few times where it felt like the thunder was coming up out of the ground instead of from the sky. I can't explain it any better than that except to say when it did this, the sound went on for 30 to 45 seconds at once. It was like the ground was growling.

Bean and Hubz had already long gone to bed and I was up working on world peace. Okay, fine, I was watching some Real Housewives but they need peace, too! When this storm started, I shut everything off and unplugged what I could. When I was 12 or 13, lightning struck a cable that had been run from the outside of our house through my bedroom window along the wall and down to my tv. The curtains and my pillow caught fire.  If I had been in my bed that night, I was told that I wouldn't be here today.  Needless to say, I was cowering in fear in my mom's bed at the time.  So I have a "thing" about storms and unplugging stuff and all that.

I went into survival mode when this storm started.  I went into our bedroom and started trying to figure out the best place to cower and who or what I was gonna take with me into the cowering zone.  We don't have many storm hidey holes in our house.  I finally decided on the walk-in closet in our bedroom.  And when I say walk-in, you can walk in, turn around and walk right back out.  So it's not that big but it would do for some cowering.

Now, what to take with me. Hmmm...

Hubz?  He was yelling at me for making so much noise and waking him up.   He quickly got assigned a third-class ticket on the Titanic for saying I was being stupid.   Don't cross a cowerer. They remember everything.

Laptop? Well, it is one of my prized possessions, but I figured if it got sucked out of the house, then I could get a new one.  Don't tell my insurance company I said that.

Oh, yeah, what about Bean?  Winner, winner! Chicken dinner!

So I proceeded to make a pallet of blankets and pillows in the floor of our closet for Bean and I.   I had to throw a lot of shoes out of the way to get us in there.  I made a note that if the house was still standing in the morning that I was gonna have to do some shoe organizing.

I grabbed Bean up outta bed and took her to the closet.  She woke up and whined and said "dis 'under scares me".  Yep, she's my kid.  I told her that she and I were gonna camp out in the closet until the mean old storm was gone.  She thought this was a grand idea but she wasn't going in alone with just Mommy.  Nope! Bean had her own possessions she wanted to save.  Yep, my kid again.

So after I arranged Bean, four stuffed animals, six books, and her purse with Lord only knows how many lip glosses, I was able to get in the cowering zone, too.   Hubz was still in bed telling me how stupid and idiotic this all was.  The earth growled again and his mush-mouth ramblings were drowned out.

By the Grace of God, everything turned out to be fine in the morning.  Well, my back and neck weren't too fond of the night's activities and reminded me of that often the next day.  But our house was still standing, my laptop was still there and Bean enjoyed it all very much.

She said "Mommy, I want to go camping with you again!"  Hold your tongue, kid.