Friday, February 25, 2011, Nashville, Tennessee, nearly 7:30 in the a.m., CST~

Dear Journal~

Good morning, y'all ...

Bill Sandusky here.  I can sleep another week.  We had some rough and woolly weather steamroll through here last night.  We were forced to spend at least an hour or two in our saferoom, thanks to tornadoes being spotted, or storms that had rotation in them, which could be indications of tornadic activity. 

Damn, I sound like a meteorologist.  Johnny's love in "all things weather" is starting to rub off on me.  LOL

His radio was going off all evening.  If it wasn't tornadoes (that came later, although we were under tornado watches at the time until 10), there were severe thunderstorm warnings or flash flood warnings.  Some of the kids were a nervous wreck, and their fear was starting to feed off on me.  (I am not a fan of severe weather.)

Louie and I kept tabs on the "developing weather situation" thanks to my laptop; we had it tuned in to one of the local stations, and the on-camera meteorologists more or less "rode us through the storm", and we could see the radar as well as the "Sky-Cam".  It was really coming down, and the winds were whipping the rain sideways.  It had to be blowing over 70 mph!  

We could hear the wind somewhat and some thunder, but we were in the confines of our saferoom, which is in our basement.   The little ones looked up at me, their big "strong" daddy, and their mamma, to see if we could do anything.  I told them to do one thing: pray.  And pray they did.  Their sweet, angelic whispers comforted the rest of us.  I was concerned because Tammi and Camey were on their way home from work: they were probably in this mess.  I prayed for their safe return.

And then the phone rang.  It was Ronee'.  Louie told her, "Ronee', you know we love you, but we're under a tornado warning".  Ronee' then said, "Oh, okay.  Stay safe.  Love you!" and "CLICK!" hung up on us.  (Ronee' called later, after the "all-clear" was given, nearly an hour and a half later.)

When we crept upstairs, like bears emerging from a cave, we were greeted by the smell of dog urine.  Poor "Cajun Gold", my wife's little Pomeranian, was peeing in the corner: poor little thing was so scared she was visibly trembling and whining piteously.  Even "Ginger", Johnny's service dog, was whining, but nothing like the little Pomeranian.  Then "Ginger" burped, and it made all of us laugh.

I peered out the front door, then the back, but I really couldn't see anything, so we all went to bed, where we all slept fitfully.

This morning, I was greeted by the sight of several more trees blown down in our back yard and a smaller younger sapling leaning on Louie's van.  Knew we had our work cut out for us: I'd recruit the older, more able-bodied kids still left here at home to clean up the mess or have our neighbor, Badu Obrymba, who has a small bulldozer, to get rid of the larger trees that were blown down by the winds.  Other than that, we escaped without any further incident.

I looked up and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to God above, for getting us through yet another stormy period.  Looks like spring is cranking up earlier this year; technically, it's still winter.  It's only the latter part of February.  March doesn't come until four more days; the first falls on a Tuesday this year.

Well, I am going to go back to bed and sleep some more.  Feel like I'm runnin' on only three hours sleep, although I KNOW I slept for at least five!  Stupid storms!!!!  I never sleep well when severe weather threatens!  Until next time, this is Bill saying so long and may God bless you!  Pray we get through this year's severe weather season; I'd greatly appreciate it, as would my family!  Thanks in advance!

~Bill.