Adventures in the Bathroom

I bet you think that means that my family was sick, don't you? But NO. Nothing that simple.

Wednesday night, Kelly gets on the bus at 3 PM, to get Bailey. She sends me an email, asking when I can get home because there are tornado warnings and watches all over our area. Most of the DC-area was under them. I, of course, having a day from hell couldn't leave immediately. And it really wouldn't have been safe for me to be standing in line in the middle of one of the lines of storms coming through. So I stayed put until about 4:45.

My commute took two hours.

I finally got home, after Bailey had already been put to bed. We made some dinner and sat down to watch the news and get the latest on the storms. As we're watching, they begin to describe a storm that was currently in Virginia, but headed directly our way. This storm had produced a tornado already. We continued to listen with renewed interest as they talked about it moving across the Potomac. We begin to look at each other when they changed our "watch" to a warning. The talk on the news become a bit more frantic as they described the storm. They began saying things like "imminent threat" and "seek shelter immediately". They told drivers in our area to abandon their cars and seek shelter under bridge overpasses or in nearby homes. They told people who have basements to go to them immediately. They told the rest of us (we have no basement) to get to an inside room and bring blankets and to do it now.

Before I continue the story, let me just say that Kelly and I are not paranoid people. We've both been through some nasty weather. But the thing of it is, an F5 tornado ripped through LaPlata (a town 8 miles south of ours) a couple of years ago and killed a lot of people. It's not unheard of in our area. It's not even uncommon. And we didn't have a basement, we don't have any real way to protect ourselves. But we can try.

So we sprung into action. We turned the volume up on the TV so we could continue to listen. We gather the cats and locked them in our internal closet downstairs. Kelly grabbed her backpack and shoved some food (protien bars and bananas for us, non-parishable food for Bailey), water, our keys and our cell phones and blackberries. We brought some blankets, a radio and our camping lantern into our downstairs bathroom. I shut all the heavy wooden blinds in our house. And then we watched. We waited a few minutes.

We laughed nervously, wondering if we were over-reacting. And then we decided we didn't care because the weather started to get more serious. Charles County officials confirmed a tornado down in LaPlata (remember, only 8 miles from us) and moving fast. Waldorf was in the direct line of the same storm system and they began to urge people to take the threat seriously and to take precautions.

We called Jodie in West Virginia. Our thought was that if a tornado did come through and something did happen, none of our family lives around here. Someone needed to know. We agreed to call her in a half hour to let her know we were okay. Poor girl. What a scary call.

That was enough for us. We got Bailey (quickly I might add) and closed ourselves into the bathroom. We spent 45 minutes in our bathroom. The storm came through and from our vantage point (huddled together on the floor of an internal room), it didn't sound too bad. The radio reports continued to urge people to take precautions. We stayed put until the storm cleared our area.

In hindsight, perhaps it was a little extreme. But honestly, we're not going to be those stupid people who don't take it seriously and then end up in the direct path of the storm with their child missing. I'd rather be overly cautious and look like an idiot than be a dumb ass and look dead.

So that was yesterday's festivities. Bailey and Kelly are home today because the daycare lost power and it was out all night. They have to shut down for health reasons (the food is spoiled and they have to be able to feed the kids).

Fun times.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? Bailey decided to poop about 10 minutes into our 45 minute bathroom experience. I can only imagine that the toilet inspired her. That smelled nice.