We need a bigger bath tub!

Hello Friend.  I missed you!  I have neglected blogging (and many other responsibilities as well as comforts) for the last week or so in favor of getting some major work done on my two project rooms in my house.  We had a small family party here on Sunday and since most of that family doesn't come over often, I wanted to have some impact in those rooms.  It makes more of a statement when the walls you have built have color on them, right?

So for almost 10 days, I worked my tushy off on those rooms and my house which hadn't had an all-over/all-at-once cleaning since I started the project in July.  We sanded, mudded (is that a word?), spent hours figuring out the mechanics of a spray texture machine, painted, painted and painted.  And at the end, we got some trim up around two doors.  It's far from done, but it sure looks better!  And then I cleaned!  Yay!  How nice to have a fully clean house all at once again!

And in the midst of all this, I struggled to get dinner on the table, keep my little ones entertained and make sure homework got done.  It was crazy and by the end, I was exhausted.  And right smack in the middle of everything - the weather monster struck!

Most of you know that Dallas was hit by several tornados one evening last week.  In the midst of my own personal mayhem, I wasn't even aware that anything other than rain was happening.  It took a phone call from my mother asking 'Are you watching the weather?  You need to turn on the news!' to wake me up and get me out of my paint induced haze.  And when I flipped the station from Nick Jr. to the local news, they were showing tornados in the southwest corner of the metroplex live and in color.  The storms were headed in our general direction slowly but surely.

I continued making dinner and waiting for Scott to come home, watching the updates and reassuring Tyler.  We have never lived through a Tornado, but for some reason Tyler can't get it through his head that a Tornado Warning is not a guarantee that a Tornado IS going to hit our house.  He jumps to worst case scenario on this in the blink of an eye, every time.  I know, he probably takes after me a bit, but it's hard to be reassuring and honest at the same time.  He wants a guarantee and I can't give him one.  But at this particular moment, we weren't even having rain.  It was sunny and calm, but not that eerie stillness that can be scary during storm weather.

So, I stayed calm and worked to keep him calm too.  'No, I don't know for sure if we'll get hit by a tornado or not, but everything is south of here right now.  We just need to watch the weather.  Yes, we'll know if it's coming.  We'll hear a siren, see it on the news and go to safety just to be sure.  Yes, we'll go in our bathroom, it's the safest place in the house.  Yes, I know the news said a closet, but our closets are either too small or on an exterior wall, the bathroom is safest.  Yes, if it's coming we'll get a mattress from Scooter's room and hold it over our heads for safety.  No, we don't need to take the sheets off.  If a tornado does actually hit our home, even though that's not very probable, we won't really care about the sheets.  Honey, I don't know where it's going next because I can't hear the announcer when you are asking me all these questions.'  Get the picture? - It was crazy.  This is the payback I get from being an excessive worrier - I have bred another one!

Tyler doesn't worry about everything as much as I do, but he does worry about weather.  Since he was pretty young he has sat glued to the tv watching maps of yellow, orange and red swirls and asking repeatedly where we were on the picture whenever storms were racing through.  He reminds me of my Grandma Eastman who used to chase us all into the basement for most thunderstorms regardless if there was a threat of something worse or not.

Still, even as I watched a tornado touch down just south of us in the northern part of downtown I stayed pretty even-keeled.  I listened as I heard it was near Children's hospital, knowing my cousin was there, and thought about how close that was but just prayed she and the other patients were safe in the massive building.  Scott came home and we sat down to dinner, Tyler firing another million comments and questions in his direction.  When the tornado dissipated a little bit, we heard one of the announcers say that if the storm continued on it's current trajectory it could come towards Richardson and we had to calm Tyler down all over again. 'They said IF Tyler, plus that's still miles away and they said it's losing strength.'

Okay, here's the problem with answering all of my son's questions that night - by the time we would get through an explanation, the situation had changed again since everything was happening so quickly.  We started to hear chatter about the storm being near the High 5, which is less than 4 miles from my house.  We looked at each other, at our dinners, at our sleeping Riley who had passed out on the couch and continued to eat, telling Tyler that everything was fine.

As we took another bite of dinner, we heard the sirens.  I've lived in this house five years and never actually heard the Richardson sirens, although Scott swears they have gone off before.  Scott and I looked outside at our backyard bathed in sunlight and at each other, wondering what to do.  I said 'they just said south of the High 5 twenty seconds ago, are they just being preventative?'  After all, you want to keep your family safe, but you don't want to freak them out unnecessarily either.  Then I looked at the tv again and saw a map that chilled me to the bone.  Clear as day, 75 and Arapaho were on the screen with a big red blob right over our house and through a haze I heard the words 'Richardson' and 'Take Cover'.

'Okay - let's go to the bathroom everyone' I announced and scooped Riley off of the couch.  I have to admit I expected Scott to smile at me and not follow, but he did - gathering animals on his way.  Tyler had just asked about the dogs 5 minutes earlier and I had said they could come in the bathroom, but not the bathtub.  I wasn't actually planning on getting in the tub myself yet at this point.  I just wanted the kids there, but with Riley sleeping on my shoulder and Scooter looking at me like I was crazy, I piled in the tub with all 3 of my munchkins.  Scott made several departures to grab our phones, a radio, a flashlight and to find the hiding kitten who then found herself in the tub too.  Scott checked the tv screen on each trip and the weather outside as well.  Tyler kept asking about the mattress, but since it's literally 8 feet from the bathroom door, I told him we'd get it if things got loud or lights started flickering.  After all, the bathroom was already pretty crowded without adding a mattress.

We hung out in that little 6x6 sanctuary for about 10 minutes.  Eight souls, trusting God to keep us safe.  Protecting the kitten from our exuberant puppy and reassuring Scooter that everything was fine.  I stayed as calm as I could for my children and was surprised at how calm I actually was.  This was the first time we had ever had to make this particular move as a family.  The first time I had actually put one of those neverending 'what if' scenarios running through my head into action.  I had very clear thoughts about how Scott could grab the mattress and jump in the tub and we could use our combined weight to help anchor the children if we really did get hit while Scott held the mattress over our heads and I held on to all 3 of my kids who I am sure that with superhuman mom strength I would be able to keep in the tub with me.  I did think all of these things, but I didn't let them show on my face and I really wasn't panicked about it either.  I kind of had this feeling that we were fine because we were all together.  And the practical part of my brain was also telling me that the chances of a tornado actually hittiing my house were pretty slim.

However, I have to be honest with you, these weren't my only thoughts.  Normally with my aforementioned EWWS (Excessive Worry Wart Syndrome - my name for it), you would think that all I would be obsessed with was my kids and husband and our safety, but I really wasn't.  I was thinking of it, yes.  But, I was also thinking of my house.  Honestly, I was sitting there thinking - of course a tornado is going to hit my house today because I just finished painting the stupid rooms that I just built.  Two months of work will be completely gone!

Now, to put this in perspective, you must know that there have been times in my daydreams that our house was demolished in some strange way.  Whatever the culprit was, it would of course leave all my cherished memories, pictures and tv in tact, but would require us to receive a huge insurance check and rebuild.  And certainly, none of us would be here when whatever it was happened.  I know this sounds terrible, after all Scott worked very hard to buy this house way before we were together and this isn't something I REALLY want to happen at all, but I admit to you, my friend, that the thought has crossed my mind.

I have a serious love/hate relationship with this house.  First of all, I love my HOME.  I love the warmth and happiness and comfort of it.  I love that it's on a huge tree filled lot on a cul-de-sac where my kids get to play in relative safety.  I love that this is where my babies were conceived and then brought home to.  I love the neighborhood and my dear neighbors.  I love the pictures on the walls and the voices that fill the spaces.  Most of all I love the peace that I feel when I walk in the door because it's home.  The HOUSE is another matter altogether.  I hate the cracks in the walls from the foundation problems that were fixed before Scotty moved in.  I hate the teeny tiny closets and the miniscule bathrooms.  I don't like the fact that my laundry room is in my kitchen or that the driveway and fence look like they belong in a run down trailer park.  It drives me crazy that all the doors in the house either stick or don't stay closed.  Whenever it rains, we get flooded in both the front and back yards which not only means walking through a lake to get to our cars, but also that grass in certain areas has serious challenges staying rooted in soil.  When something breaks or needs upgrading, even the smallest of things, I want to cry because I have learned the hard way that replacing, fixing or upgrading things in a 50 year old house is never easy - it's a complicated disaster that ends up costing 3 times what it should.

So over the years, Scotty and I have come to a serious compromise.  We'll stay here because we love it here, but we are going to fix the house so that it works for our growing family, even if it takes us 10 years.  Project #1 - Turn front room with no descernible purpose into large 4th bedroom and because they are attached and entertwined, expand and prettify the entryway.  There are a gazillion projects on this list, but we are very comfortable with doing one at a time and taking our time.  Unless we win the lottery, in which case all bets are off and we start a new plan from scratch.

Still, since we were finally beginning our renovation and upgrading process and because I had worked so hard all summer and most especially that week - as I sat in the bathtub contemplating tornados and their damages, I think it was pretty normal to be considering the potential destruction of my two front rooms.  And maybe even healthy!

After all was said and done, a friend texted me to tell me that Richardson was all clear.  I ventured to the living room and confirmed that all trace of red, orange and yellow had left our area of the map and I allowed my family out of their little prison cell.  I cleaned up our forgotten dinner and smiled when Tyler said that even though it was kind of scary, he liked that we were all together in the bathroom and had some extra family time.  I called my mom to tell her that we were all right and to check on Veronica and Greg who had ridden out the storm at Children's.  And when Scooter looked up at me and said 'Mommy, I think we need a bigger bath tub', I laughed.  I couldn't agree more!  Yes, honey, I thought, Project # 269 on our list is definitely a bigger bathtub.

Thanks and God Bless!