Twisters

Ok, I recently celebrated my 27^th birthday and this year, my birthday fell on a Friday. So like most people, when you get to celebrate your birthday on a Friday, you make plans to go out and celebrate…which is exactly what I did. Let’s be honest, you only get to have your birthday fall on a weekend every 6 years. My fiancé was coming into town to take me to a nice restaurant to eat and then we were going to meet with friends for drinks and good company. Did any of this happen? NO! Absolutely not. This is how it went down:

I got a mass e-mail form the University about a week before my birthday notifying the students to prepare for hazardous weather conditions on March 2^nd and spring weather safety tips. Like most mass university emails, I sent this to its final resting place in my deleted folder.

The day of my birthday, I woke up to the weatherman calling for the one of the most severe storms the state of Kentucky has ever seen. I looked out the window, it was sunny and warm…leading to further evidence that the weatherman lies and that meteorology should no longer be classified as a science unless tarot card readings is also considered a science.

Therefore I continued on with my day: I took the dog to physical therapy (this will require a whole different blog post as to why Hadley must go to PT) where I was confronted with drivers who believed that the rules of the road could be ignored in the face of a possible storm. I was also concerned about my cat (Pootie) because he is deathly afraid of storms and has been urinating outside the liter box. So I took him to the vet just to make sure he was not infected with a UTI or blocked. As it turns out, he is perfectly healthy but has anxiety. So the vet sent me home with a prescription for Prozac that was written for Pootie cat, but lets be honest, maybe he was secretly hoping I would take some too.

Since the weatherman only issued severe weather alerts but eluded to life threatening twisters, people still flooded Kroger like the apocalypse is about to rain down on humanity and the University of course, still had classes scheduled. So I go in early to have my TB skin test read (which was negative…nailed it!) and planned on leaving directly thereafter to give me time to give the Cat his pill and prepare for the storm. As I walk back, I notice my teacher having lunch in the atrium and he spots me too, so now I am obligated to come to class. The weather didn’t look too bad, so I stayed for the following class and left thereafter. The university finally issued a notification that they would be closing early due to the weather.

I get home, give the Cat a Prozac, wait for my fiancé to get into town safely and eat a snack. All is calm…until my friend calls because she doesn’t have a basement and is scared to death of tornadoes. She has been worked up all day about it and I can tell she would be better off if she could at least feel safe. So she comes over with a dooms day package: a body pillow, her MacBook, Cal (the Maltese), a blanket made out of old sorority t-shirts and a 6 –pack to keep her calm. Additionally, her boyfriend came over seeking shelter from the storm. Even though I had not expected to spend my birthday in the basement, in the dark with 3 other people, two dogs and a cat, I at least accomplished one of my goals on my birthday: to be in good company. Some times it’s the small things that really do make a difference.