The weekend begins...

Last night was AAUW.

The cake DID turn out, it got cooked through. I was disappointed in it, personally, but one member asked me for the recipe so I guess it was OK. (I think part of the problem was when I put the cup of miniature marshmallows on the bottom of the pan, I was like "No, that does not look like enough" and added more, and then they rose up and the raspberries sank and the whole cake got kind of weird. Also I think the original probably used sweetened frozen raspberries because, despite the gelatin you add, it was kind of tart)

The program was on severe weather preparedness. Most of which I already knew, though we got spiffy emergency bags we're supposed to fill up with stuff (I am NOT, however, keeping my medications in them; I can grab those off the dining room table if a real emergency is coming). Though it might be wise for me to get a first aid kit to stick in it, and a new flashlight. And the guy's suggestion to scan all your important documents and store them as .pdf files on a thumb drive is a good idea, and something I might not have thought of. (And the idea is: the thumb drive stays in the emergency bag). Then again, when a tornado is threatening, one of the things I grab as I go into the bathroom to hide out is my purse, which has the most vital things (some piece of ID with my photo on it, in case of evacuation, so you can be let back into your neighborhood).

But. At one point he showed video from the 2013 Moore tornado. I remember this one - I was on a train going north to visit family (and was out of the area) and when I did get to checking my e-mail I had several panicked e-mails from people on Ravelry who were unfamiliar with either how tornadoes work or Oklahoma's geography (several of them were Europeans) who thought I was in the direct path of the storm. (Moore is something like 135 miles from me, and tornadoes don't last that long or travel that far).

But anyway. Tornadoes are THE single scariest weather thing to me. I have bad memories of running to the basement as a child (and of the 1974 outbreak that leveled Xenia - not near to us, but still: in Ohio). And the unpredictability: Ice is bad, but I can mostly hunker down and wait out an ice storm. Flooding is bad but you can avoid the flooded areas or evacuate if you have to (I was lucky in my choice of house; it's up on a ridge and it's away from any waterways; my street would flood and the water would be carried off north, where the land is lower, long before I'd get water coming up to my house)

But tornadoes: nope.

I could feel myself getting tense and even feeling a bit of prickling behind my eyes* (a sign of impending tears). I kept telling myself over and over again, "You're okay, you're safe, this happened five years ago, this is not happening now" and also I grabbed hard onto my lower arm with my other hand and squeezed. It was a weird reaction but the video was pretty real and in-your-face. When I got home after the meeting I stayed up later than I might otherwise to try to calm back down. (And watched one of the re-runs of Bob's Burgers, which usually helps)

(* It could also be that this has just been an incredibly hard week, starting with the Science Olympiad and dealing with Steve's death. And also that I can tell all the trees are having sex (DAMMIT somehow blogger is now stuck in italics mode and I can't get it to go away)

Okay. Ending this post now. SEE NEXT POST argh)