I went outside at lunch, only to find that my perfect summer weather had been replaced by high winds and patchy clouds, with heavier, more ominous looking clouds on the horizon. I just went over to peek out a window, and it looks like it's back to sunny and sweet (much like yours truly -- nah, who'm I trying to kid with that one?), although weather reports are warning of possible severe weather later on tonight. Let's hear it for tornado season!

Remember that big, bad-ass, F6 tornado that ripped through Oklahoma City's surrounding towns last year? We even made international news with that one. That was scary, even way up here in Tulsa. The same storm that reduced Moore, OK to a post-apocolyptic nightmare was on a direct path to T-town. I lived in Tulsa then, in a second-floor apartment on the side of town that would get hit first. Coward that I am, as soon as I saw the news footage of that thing heading up I-35 I grabbed my pets and my prized possessions and high-taled it to my mommy's house in Claremore. We were all up till about 2 a.m., watching and praying, getting more and more ancy as it raped and pillaged its way towards us. Finally it reached the Tusa metro area, and the storm tracker radar, zoomed in to city block detail, showed that it was headed directly towards my apartment complex. I braced myself for the probability that I was about to be homeless, but gave thanks that I had somewhere to go for shelter, and said a prayer for my neighbors who couldn't say the same. Imagine my overwhelming relief when, a mere three blocks from my home, the tornado pulled back up into the sky and the storm began to peter out.

I went to bed, relieved and thankful. It wasn't until the next morning that we learned the true extent of the damage. It was an overwhelming feeling. I felt glad to be alive, and thankful that I'd been spared, but at the same time I didn't understand why I deserved to live when all of those people had been killed, why my home was left standing when so many people had lost theirs. I still don't understand, but I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it. You can't assign blame to nature. It simply is, and all we can do is try our best to keep out of its way.

Which all makes me really glad that I now live in a house with an underground room.