Oklahoma as beach front property

I do love living in a place with really unpredictable weather. Keeps one on one's toes. Did I say love? Well, that's exaggerating. Ok, well, that's just a down-right lie.

Oklahoma has crazy weather. Temperatures jumping 20 degrees from day to day is pretty common. Everyone knows, of course, about the tornadoes we get here. Oh, and did I mention, now we apparently get TROPICAL STORMS!

I have to side track here to mention something funny (!) that I just remembered about our time in Okinawa, Japan. During the spring of 2002, there was a tornado that hit one of the base housing areas. We didn't live near there, but the joke went that because of all the folks who transfer back and forth from Oklahoma to Okinawa, the two were starting to merge in some weird space-time continuum way. And now? PROOF, I say!! Go here for the satellite image of Tropical Storm Erin, the storm that ripped through Oklahoma in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 19th. At one point, apparently, there was even a well defined eye to the storm. Jeez.

The most fun of all, of course, was the loud "THUMP" I heard at about 5:30 Sunday morning. (click on pictures to enlarge)

The 50 mph winds caused several branches from the trees in my back yard to come down, one on my house. (really lucky, actually! could have been SO much worse) I crept out in the dark with flash light in hand and saw the branch on the roof, above my bedroom. What I didn't see at that point was the 2 ft hole in my roof. And it wasn't until about a half hour later that the rain picked up and the water started coming in through the hole enough to start leaking into the bedroom.

As soon as I realized that the branch did more damage than I'd originally thought, my oldest niece (who'd stayed the night) and I knocked on my neighbors doors with pleas for assistance. Sawing and heaving ensued, and we were able to get the branch off the roof. One layer of plastic was laid down, a board was drilled into place over the hole, and another layer of plastic was added over the top. All-in-all, and pretty good patch.

Then we wet, bedraggled, and tired warriors against Mother Nature went off to breakfast in town, because, as luck would have it, there was also no power with which to make coffee. And wouldn't be for 8 more hours.

To the tune of Boomer Sooner, the University of Oklahoma fight song, sing along with me:

Oklahoma, Oklahoma... !

"Ronery, I'm so ronery..."

Sorry, that's supposed to be "lonely." Channeling Kim Jong-il from Team America: World Police. I suppose the rest of the song doesn't apply, just the first couple lines. Don't have plans for world domination.

After a very long, wonderful, blissful time of having my husband at home most every night, he is gone. Five years is really a very long time for a military spouse to have their other half home on a continuous basis. Sure, he would go away for a week at a time, just long enough for me to start to miss him. It's been two weeks now. And it's starting to sink in, I guess. Four months to go.

"Ronery..."