I think once you’ve been smack dab in the middle of a tornado - for instance, separated from one only by the roof, windshield, and rest of the body of your car - you develop sort of a special and strange kind of empathy when people and places you know well (or the place where you got caught in one before) are in danger , or in the middle, of one of those scary mothers coming down from the skies.

Even though the forecasts were trumpeting potential gloom and doom for West Tennessee yesterday and last night, the storms we’ve had the last couple of days in this area were sometimes a little nasty but nothing very out of the ordinary. We had some more early this morning, but other than the fact that my new neighbors’ car alarm goes off EVERY SINGLE TIME it thunders or there’s lightning - and I’m not kidding - most of it’s been, like, meh. And right now in Memphis it’s sunny again and bright (too bright).

Yet at the same time, now, one of my two home counties and a neighboring one just had a tornado warning, though I’ve not heard of anything having happened yet.

And even more to the point, lighthearted and flatly hysterically funny chatter in my Twittersphere this morning has given way to worried and concerned Tweets from my Nashville and Middle Tennessee friends and acquaintances as what looks to be a potentially very dangerous storm system moves into the area. I’m witnessing it all in near-real time, from their points of view, and it’s really as concerning and nearly frightening to me as if I’m right this minute sitting in Ginger’s or Slarti’s or Busy Mom’s laps, or in the newsroom with Christian.

And now, as I write this, it’s a few minutes later and I am breathing a little sigh of relief reading that Rachel and her co-workers have been let back out of the basement, and everyone else sounding a little less cautious too.

With one exception - news via NIT of a confirmed tornado in Lawrence County. I don’t know too much about Lawrence County, and I’m racking my brain to remember whether I know any bloggers or anyone else in Lawrence County, so it’s a little different now… but just a little.

I know what that tornado looks and sounds like, exactly. And I know what it’s like to think okay, am I getting out of this alive? And I know what it feels like, the helpless feeling when you finally realize there’s not a darn thing you can do but wait and see. And I know that even though it’s usually only a matter of minutes, it feels more like hours.

Agonizing, horrifying hours. There is absolutely nothing in the world like it, not that I’ve ever experienced, and hope to never have to again.

Arrival time in Lewisburg 12:45 p.m., they’re saying. One minute from now as I write. I hope everyone in its path stays safe.

(1) Skittles Chocolate Mix - Well, I’m a big fan of Skittles in general (especially the Sour and Tropical), but as many know, I’m not a big fan of chocolate. (It’s “okay”.) So I wasn’t really expecting to like Skittles’ new Chocolate Mix that much, but I sure did expect to like it more than I do. With flavors like S’mores, Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter, you would just think they’d be better than they are. The Brownie Batter ones make me cough. Real chocolate fans will probably love them though.

(2) Dogs with Little Dreadlocks - Enough said about that, but if it would just (A) stop turning cold or (B) stop raining…

(3) No No No No NO Tornadoes! - Speaking of the above, it’s a gorgeous day out right now and feels REALLY nice outside even though it’s about 100 degrees in my house, and I am so sick of rain. So the news from Channel 2 Weather this morning regarding potential tornado activity here in the west is a bummer, and I don’t deal well with the sirens nowadays. Go away, tornadoes, shoo!

(4) The Beanie Army - Tojo, my cat who terrorizes the rest of the house and lives in the guest bedroom otherwise (but he’s such a sweetie when it’s just me and him), has a new project going too, I noticed. As I’ve mentioned before, since no other animals in the house want to be friends with him, he has made all of my old Beanie Baby and Teenie Beanie cats and dogs that were back in the bedroom his only friends. (As Churlita called him, he’s “resourceful” like that.) Yesterday I noticed he’s got them all lined up, almost in single file, down one entire side of the bed back there. I wonder what this means?

(5) In Hiding - Also, wonder where I put my W-2 and 1099? Hmm.

(1) Somebody (Jag? Aunt B.? I can’t find it now) wrote about these a while back and I was covetous and waiting for them to appear on Memphis grocery store shelves. Finally they have, and now I can NOT stop eating them because they are the best thing EVER:

(2) I just got back from a 24-hourish trip to Birmingham. I drove through a monsoon in Mississippi to get there. Got there and Alabama was, like, sunny and warm and had been all day. Today it was like 78 degrees and felt as humid as any June day in Tennessee. I get back to Memphis and not only am in rain again but immediately have to change into a sweatshirt because I’m freezing. Grrr.

(3) Trying to decide if I should be worried about Dobie having eaten a few Nair wax strips, but considering all the other dangerous, ridiculous, and just plain gross things he has ingested in his 13 years on the planet, I think probably not.

Big difference from yesterday afternoon/evening (see below). I thought it wasn’t ever gonna stop snowing. It was still snowing at 4 a.m.-ish. More pics from this morning here.

Remember what this looked like a couple of hours ago? Yep, still coming down. Fast and big BIG flakes.

Boy, was it obvious to me with my white dogs out in the snow just how badly they all need a bath. Obviously they are not getting one today.

So did Super Tuesday actually happen yesterday? Because there was no talk of anything on the news here yesterday except this tornado, that tornado, the next tornado, and the one after that, and etc., etc., etc. Starting about 4:30 pm and well after midnight, on at least one local station that was virtually it.

Living in the center of the city, I’m usually protected ‘cos the main danger zones in the Metro Memphis area tend to be out in the ‘burbs. Still, I didn’t sleep last night because nowadays, when the sirens start going off, my adrenalin rush just gets out of this world (and if you’ve never been here before or have forgotten, this is why).

There was some damage not too far away though, out in the airport area; lots of damage out in the eastern suburbs and across the state line in DeSoto County, Mississippi; and probably the most stunning, for here, was the 50-foot chunk of wall taken out of Hickory Ridge Mall down in Southeast Memphis. Kid sister and her hubby lived not too far from there, just south of Germantown, until they moved a couple of years ago, so for once, I was actually happy they are now living in Nebraska. Otherwise last night would have been even more horrifying and frightening.

Though there was plenty going on here last night to freak out about, I found myself much more affected by the news of the tornado that blitzed the north part of Jackson, Tennessee, about an hour northeast. The damage was huge in many spots up there, most notably the demolition of a/some dormitory building(s) at Union University.

Why would that affect me so much more than what was happening right here in my own back yard? Because when I got caught on the road in my car during the 2003 tornado that hit Jackson, I was pretty much right there by Union University. No matter that I was basically safe at home an hour away, last night in my little house in front of the computer, listening to and watching the live stream of the continuing weather update on one of the local stations. When they said a tornado had touched down in Jackson and said where, I knew exactly what it looked like up there at that moment, ‘cos I’d been there, right there in it.

I guess I’m always gonna be a little more freaked out by bad storms and the sirens, but for a moment or two, that really, really bothered me last night. Glad I wasn’t out in it all, here nor there, but just hearing about them now in places I know - and especially that one twister in particular, striking right there where I was that night in 2003 - it’s just kinda bone-chilling.

On another note, thanks to everyone who stopped by and left such kind words about Rocky yesterday, including some I haven’t heard from in years and years. Very much appreciated, all of you. I left out one little part yesterday I meant to throw in there, so bear with me a sec and I’ll stop talking about it soon enough.

Like most of my zoo, Rocky was a foundling. My neighbor who lived here for years came home from work one day a little over ten years ago, and when he got out of the car, there was this little tiny orange kitten in the small tree right above the driveway mewing at him. So of course he immediately knocked on my door, orange ball of fur in hand.

And because there is an invisible sign on my forehead that only cats and dogs can see that says “SUCKER”, the little orange furball never left. Seems like only yesterday, and when he was so sick and old and leaving us, that’s really all I kept thinking about, that day years ago.

Well, that’s it for the moment, I’m so tired I’m about to drop dead, so I’m off for now. Tomorrow maybe I’ll write about my Christmas adventures. It’s not a pretty tale.

P.S. Again on tornadoes - does Knuck have the right idea? ‘Cos what if the tornado hits your house, but doesn’t really blow it up and just does some damage but nothing fatal to you or the house, and then you ARE wandering like that, and then you’re, like, this naked guy wandering around Nashville post-tornado, and…

It’s really still too early in the morning for me to ponder this. Smiley will have the punchline I’m too exhausted to come up with right now, I just know it.

We just had a righteously major storm come through the central city here in Memphis a few minutes ago.  It got a little bit scary for a few minutes.  I think there’s more storm action on the way today/tonight (and this one’s not quite over yet) as well as more predicted tomorrow, which was supposed to be the worst weather day.

The good:  The temp dropped 11 degrees within minutes, which has just made my life a little bit easier to deal with at present.

The potentially very bad:  You know that if we get any hail, I’m going to be inconsolable.

Hodgepodge of unrelated, mostly gripey stuff to top off the weekend…

I have been talking up the California trip so much in delaying and delaying posting about it that it’s going to be totally anticlimactic by the time I ever actually DO write about it. But there are a lot of little details I don’t want to miss and links I want to link and stuff, so forgive me while I postpone it again until next week.

Finished figuring up my taxes and while it wasn’t really that much of a surprise, it’s frustrating and aggravating and disappointing. Unmarried folks who don’t make all that much to begin with and have to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to make ends meet shouldn’t be getting slammed with these kinds of tax bills. Other folks too, I know. It just really makes me kind of angry to have to be considering dropping the second job(s) I do in order to try to make ends meet because I get slammed with so much in taxes by working a second or third job. I mean, that’s crazy, right? Anyway, so bah humbug but at least it’s over and done with all but for the filing. (And for anyone who doesn’t know, the deadline is actually April 17th this year instead of the 15th.)

I have been nominated something like three or four times now for this Thinking Blogger thing that’s going around, which I find kind of amusing (though certainly humbled and appreciative) because I’m like one of the biggest off the top of my head, fly by the seat of my pants bloggers I know… if the thought crosses my mind, it usually gets written, but I don’t think that necessarily constitutes real thinking by any definition of the word. Every once in a while I’ll get some idea (that’s usually something funny, a joke, whatever) that gets a little more thought put into it but like I said, usually, if a thought crosses my mind, it comes right out just like that. As my boyfriend has said about me and his mother, we have committees in our heads that talk right out of our mouths (and in my case, type right out of my fingers too).

Anyhow, well, there’s that, and I’m supposed to pass this along by listing five bloggers for the same Thinking Blogger thing, but just about everyone I would have immediately listed has already been named by others, in some cases several times already. So I think I am going to hold off on this until next week when I have more time, and probably sift through and pull out some of the non-local bloggers that I can’t go day without reading. So I will get to that, but just not right this minute.

My black eye is looking a LITTLE better, and I am finally starting to sort of see light at the end of the tunnel after being sick for, what, two weeks now. I am definitely better and much less congested, but I would like for the congestion to go away now, thanks. And the cough, which is just hanging on and won’t go away. It’s like, sheesh, what is this, TB? The plague? Ugh. When I was a preteen and used to be a really voracious reader - I read fast, so I used to read a LOT when I had time for things like that - there were two or three or four books I read around the same time that were set in the days of the first world war and suffragettes and whatnot, and there was always some pitiful young female character that was about on her deathbed throughout the whole book - in all of them! - with tuberculosis or influenza, and before the book was through, they always died, but women got the right to vote so it was all okay in the end. What that means I don’t know, but I definitely identify with that whole laying on one’s deathbed coughing up a lung kind of thing right about now. If I could just vacuum out my head and chest, everything would be okay.

Anyway, I’ve got somewhere to be the rest of the weekend, so ciao for now and catch up with all of you lovely people on Monday, if I don’t drown in a flash flood on my way to wherever, seeing as how the rain doesn’t seem to want to stop and that weird thunder is still going on. It’ll thunder, like, once, and then stop, and not do it again for like an hour and a half, and I’m just sitting here thinking, you know, just let’s have a great big huge storm and get it OVER with already.

Yeah. So, well, ciao and later and all that.

I know blogging about the weather sucks, so I apologize. But this storm we are having here in Memphis tonight is just plain weird.

The thunder sounds funny and just doesn’t SOUND right, the lightning in the sky looked bizarre last time I was out, the rain is weird, and the whole shebang just keeps going on and on and on. And, it’s freakin’ COLD. I just had to pull the heater out of retirement once again.

Bleh. And why haven’t I made myself a graphic yet with the “no” symbol & a funnel cloud? Must get on that.

Just so you know, I have now ditched the sweatshirt, because it is sooo warm today.

Ironically, the t-shirt I had on underneath? Yep, blue.

I hope I don’t fall asleep early again tonight and Rachel has a new blog to play with in the morning. Finally. No thanks to my slowpokey butt.

I think I might try those tofu corn dogs Smiley wrote about for lunch/dinner today.

See, you really needed to know all this. You just didn’t know it ’til now.

So.

Was this the Horrible Severe Scary Extreme Dangerous Weather Day in Tennessee That Wasn’t, or what?

I don’t know about our friends in Nashville right now - who were in the real expected danger zone that Memphis really wasn’t - but I got sunshine, 60-ish degrees, and birds singing outside my window.

What about you?

UPDATE & P.S.: I don’t want my tongue-in-cheek sarcasm about Tennessee’s failure to live up to today’s weather predictions to discount at all the horrible tornado damage and injuries and deaths that are currently being reported by our neighbors to the south in Alabama. My ex’s stepmother’s family is in Enterprise, Alabama, which has just been devastated this afternoon, and Mr. Edge is just outside Birmingham, where there are reported touchdowns of tornadoes in the area currently as I type. Certainly thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected.

Dear Sista Smiff,

Please take note of this weather-related blurb from our friends at WKRN, mainly the red highlights.

I feel rather certain the actual location of the gusts in the first highlighted one was more than likely in or around the vicinity of here.

Your friend in fair & stormy weather alike,
Lynnster

I know it’s not in the forecast, but it sure does feel and smell like snow out there this evening.

We have snow in Memphis. This isn’t it, this is what it looked like in Jonesboro, Arkansas on Wednesday, courtesy of a good friend of mine.

It’s looking pretty much like that in Memphis right now, maybe not quite as much, but everything is pretty much covered anyway.

I took the dogs out around nine-ish and it was just wet from having rained, and didn’t take them out again ’til almost midnight, and got a pretty big shock when I opened the door. Still coming down last I looked out…

We had sleet coming down around 11 p.m., but it didn’t exactly cover the ground and I’m just kinda like “eh” about it. I suspect the morning will just be slushy and gross.

Mom reports snowing up there near Newscomaville, I dunno whether that means “a lot”, “some”,