STORM

This morning at 6:00 we were awakened by the tornado sirens. For the briefest of moments I considered staying in bed; thinking it would be less painful to be blown into the next county than to get up and go to the basement.

Then I remembered I had a child in the house whom I must save.

Yes, only one child. Blake is now a future Marine; he's on his own.

Not really. He spent the night at a friend's house.

Anyway, I staggered out of bed and went to Kayla's room.

Kaaaayla...let's go to the basement - tornado sirens.

Then I went to get the dog.

Now the dog's favorite place to hide during a storm is in our garage. We have a small set of steps leading up to our door that leads to the laundry room, and she likes to hide under those steps at the first rumble of thunder.

When she can't get to the garage, she will choose from a number of different hiding places in the house - our shower, the basement bathtub, under the bar in the kitchen. She used to hide under the bed but now she's too fat.

She's very sensitive about that.

But her new favorite hiding place is the cat's litter box in the corner of the laundry room. And no, she doesn't scoop it out before she settles into it. And no, she is not small enough to fit in a litter box. But she somehow manages to fold herself into an interesting origami shape and lie there and tremble.

That is how I found her this morning.

And I had to drag her by the collar through the kitchen and living room to get her to the basement. She's learning though. As soon as she saw the open basement door, she zipped down the stairs and headed straight for the bathroom.

Where she stood trembling like a leaf and staring at me.

Weeeelll, can you give an old girl a hand up please?

So since it was six a.m. and she's a "Senior Dog" with arthritis, I gave her a little nudge and plopped her 57 pound body into the bathtub.

Where she proceeded to tremble and drool through the rest of the severe storm.

Blake absolutely loves it when he opens his shower curtain and finds: a) the dog lying there asleep or b) the dog's foot prints and drool left behind from her traumatic storm experience.

Blake is going to be home any minute.

Surprise Son!! We had a tornado nearby. Did you hear the sirens? Cookie is just fine, thanks for asking.

Ahh! This is just one of the many things I'm sure Blake will miss while he's a boot camp.