This is NOT how I had planned this day

Six am, tornado sirens. I hate the tornado sirens, mostly because they add such an air of tension to my day.  For those of you not in North Alabama, it may be difficult to explain, but we have spent the last *fifteen* hours listening to the weathermen - on Every Station - carefully identifying the areas of greatest danger. Without pause. No commercials. I'm not exaggerating.  And so, to the backdrop of your entire day, you add the soundtrack of fear and warning.

Add to that the fact that Kate was absolutely the sickest today that I have ever seen her.  This is the child who has such a freakish tolerance for pain that she didn't cry when she got her six-month immunizations.  One time, she knocked off her toenail and didn't notice. Today she was pale and shaking, and whimpering, plus dizzy, throwing up, and feverish.

Six hours, two needles, and a CT scan later, we were sent home sure that it was none of the big stuff, or at least no surgery required. Thank God for nurses who watched the little ones so they wouldn't have to witness the blood-letting, who gave me their personal cell phone numbers and offered to keep the little ones during the CT scan ... and thank God for Beth who rescued them from the tense faces and worried glances (despite our best efforts not to freak Kate out). And all this with the tornado sirens punctuating each hour and the weathermen proclaiming their harbingers of doom.

But we are home now, and home is fine.  Ben walked in with pizza ten minutes before the power went out, and the flashlights I had bought for the trip came in handy.  Not so relieved tonight is my friend "C" - her brother was at his MIL's funeral when he got the the call from a neighbor that his house was gone.  And - as if it could not be worse - the deceased woman's other child got the same call. It's hard to wrap your head around the loss. Two children1, no mother, no home.  But being at the funeral spared their lives, so there is blessing even in that.

I am packed and ready to go ... if I'm even able.  Seems a little crazy to me, to leave all this adventure behind.  Three hundred thousand people are without power, some are estimating that it will take days to get us up and running again, and I'm thinking of getting on a plane in a few hours? Ben thinks I'm crazy not to go; "what's a power outage?" he says.  I guess it just hammers home ... I want to go, but I don't want to leave.