Well, &*#$

 So, the last 24 hours has been.....something.

My younger guy had his last first day of school.

Then stuff got canceled because weather.

Things escalated quickly.

I had planned to meet my work people in town for dinner.  All the sudden, I had meetings crowd my last 2 hours of my work day, guaranteeing that I was ass in chair until 5 pm.

Things I supposed work out the way they do for a reason. The boys tried to shoo me out, but I felt strongly that I needed to be close to home. I felt a little wimpy bailing on my peeps, but at the same time, the feeling was strong.

Less than a half hour later, we were, the four of us, in the basement.  Power left about 20 minutes in. Elder's anxiety amped up.  Dad tried to tend his newts while fielding work calls with his headlamp on. We ventured upstairs about 45 minutes later, and the kids immediately started demanding what's for dinner. 

Uuuuuuh.  Hm. We can't cook. We can't open the fridge or freezer. And everyone is in the same boat. Or would be. Foolishly, we all got into the SUV and took off in the pouring rain. 

By now other alarms were going off.  We figured out a way to a Wawa (fortunately everywhere) and grabbed dinner on the go. We made our way back home, only to find that the way we came was blocked by a tree that had fallen and splintered in the street.

Dad and I both did the calculus that we could have, at any time, been under it. 

We spoke nothing of it. 

After dinner, G, dad and I played scrabble by flashlight, then called it an early bed time.

What we didn't know until later was that tornados ripped up quite a bit of our town, and what didn't get ripped up got flooded.

I wanna cry.

I've never lived anything like this. Until today.