Outside our house yesterday afternoon

And The World Rights Itself Again

Keith thinks I'm crazy that I am convinced that everything goes wrong when he goes out town. Things break, people get sick, school canceled and disasters happen.

Which is why he smugly pointed out yesterday evening as we sat huddled in the dirty closet under our basement stairs for the second time in an hour that this, in fact, did happen while he was home and he wants it noted.

Here in Wisconsin we have very cold winters, lots of snow that hangs around indefinitely and very little surprises in January. Except for yesterday when the record high in our area's recorded history hit almost 70 degrees (okay, I'll say it, global warming?) and a batch of newly brewed tornadoes came thundering across our area. Good times.

Luckily they hopped right over our downtown and into the lake and spared our area, but other parts of southeastern Wisconsin weren't so lucky. Just a few miles south of us some serious havoc was wreaked. I am very grateful that Keith was home on Monday for sure.



Then I woke up this morning to what can only be described as a bought of stomach flu. And I'm home alone for the next three days with kids and high levels of nausea and cramping. But at least our house hasn't blown away. Now I can't throw myself a pity party.

Dang, I hate perspective.



And on a side note, I am embarrassed to admit that I did not even have a disaster kit. We threw a few diapers and wipes down the stairs and hoped for the best. For those who didn't know me in my former life, I was the marketing director for one of the largest Red Cross chapters in the country. I spent a better portion of my time marketing disaster preparedness - specifically due to tornadoes. I did talks on how to make a disaster kit, I helped create television PSAs to get awareness out and I was even one of the first responders to stand upon a hill and survey an entire neighborhood leveled due to a category F4 tornado that hit an area of Cincinnati in 1999.



This is the view I had from the elementary school on top of the hill in OH.

On the upside, we had water and beer in the downstairs fridge. Gotta have priorities.

You can only guess what I'll be doing in the next week.