A wave of storm lines raced across the area all night long, booming and blustering and blasting the rain for a while. The front woke me up around 12:15 and again around 4:00 with massive claps of thunder.
Of course, I didn't sleep much in my bed last night -- I was dozing in front of the computer watching the radar. Much as I despise being in a house or school or, worse, being outside, during a thunderstorm, I am fascinated by bad weather. I don't enjoy being in a house when a thunderstorm hits, but I'll sit at the windows at Panera and watch the storm roll across the city next door, and I'll get in my car and drive straight into a storm, knowing full well I'm not Dorothy.
This phobia stems from my house being hit when I was twelve. Actually, the property suffered three hits in two weeks: the first strike missed a huge propane tank by less than a foot and took out a tree with a diameter the size of a mini-van. The second strike hit the house about ten feet from where my sister was sitting in the attic play area, and the strike caused a small electrical fire in the eaves. The third strike took out a birch tree at the front corner of the property along the driveway.
Putting it mildly, I freak the frig out when it thunders.
That being said, however, I feel like an insignificant little pissmeyer when I discuss this phobia and then I reflect upon the devastation suffered in Oklahoma. I know I just blogged about tornadoes and bad weather the other day, but truly I am not nearly so hardy nor hopeful as those who put themselves in the direct path of an angry Mother Nature every single day.
Yes, I literally fell off my computer chair last night, and it was a result of the storm and the thunder. However, if I hadn't been sleeping at the computer in the middle of the night, I never would've been flailing around on the floor like a hooked halibut. And it gave me a chance to watch the storms form and reform along the front line on the radar.
Thank you Ma Nature, and thanks to you crazy people who put yourselves last to become First Responders. Amazingly horrible loss of life in OK, but it's also a great show of humanity in the aftermath.
