A few years ago, a series of tornadoes hit the southside of Atlanta, including the Atlanta Motor Speedway, which isn't that far from my house. While it was an F2 tornado that tore up the racetrack, it was an F0 tornado that tore up my backyard and scared the living bajesus out of me. Hey, all of you from Tornado Alley, you can stop laughing now. It did. The thing came within eight feet of my house. I know that's how close it got because it picked up my privacy fence from the second panel onward and threw it two houses down.I remember that night well. It was the season finale of the first season of Dancing with the Stars. With 15 minutes left to go on the show, the electricity went out. Of course, I was royally pissed. I wanted to see if my girl Kelly would win. (I'm a GH fan. Give me a break.) My cell phone and the flashlights were downstairs so I had to feel my way down in the pitch black dark to retrieve them. I then called my mom to ask her to give me a play by play of what was going on. Before she could even turn it over to ABC, I heard this whistling noise, looked outside, and saw the maple tree in my front yard bent all the way to the ground.
As Oprah would say, I had an "ah-ha" moment at that point. I had seen the movie Twister enough to know that the whistle and the wind meant only one thing--a tornado was coming. I think I said an explicative into the phone, hung up, and then yelled, "Bailey, Bella, downstairs now!" I didn't hear footsteps so I turned around to get them. I wasn't going to let my babies go the way of Toto. When I did so, I ran into Bella, who had apparently been following me the entire time. I wasn't surprised. She's my second shadow, even in broad daylight. I figured that Bailey had to still be under the bed so I yelled for him again. I guess the tone of my voice or the commotion outside was enough to convince him that Mommy wasn't kidding around because he came flying down the stairs a moment later.
For once, both dogs did everything that I said thereafter. I yelled, "Bathroom, now!" and they went right to the bathroom. To this day, every time it rains, Bella goes right back to that bathroom or to the one closest to her without any prompting from me, hides behind the toilet, and has the dog version of a panic attack. I always end up being her human Prozac during those times, as the only way to calm her down is to coddle her for an hour and tell her that Mommy isn't going to let the big, bad storm get her.
As I said in the previous post, Bella spent the end of Lost growling at what I assumed was the electrical plug to my heated throw. Having finally gotten up and taken a good look at the condition of my house, I am now rethinking that assumption. Dirty clothes are everywhere. Dirty dishes have filled the kitchen sink to its capacity. The bathroom counter is covered in various hair products and creams. Several piles of junk mail are scattered throughout the house, and I keep finding Styrofoam cups and Coke cans that need to be thrown away. I could have sworn that the house was clean yesterday. What happened?
I tell you what happened. A silent, invisible tornado came through my house while I was watching Lost, dumped all of my dirty underwear on the floor, used my frizz gel and moisturizers, ate my spaghetti, drank my Coke, and opened all of my mail. Then, just to prove a point, it scared Bella, causing her to growl incessantly and me to miss the ending of the show. Seriously, that's what happened. I didn't mess the house up at all. It was that darn tornado, I swear. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
