Thursday, April 21, 2011

What would you have done?

Last night, I didn't sleep that well.  They were calling for the potential of overnight tornadoes and frankly, those are the kind that frighten me the most.  I stayed up, watched the radar, knew when the storms were to start and slept a few hours before that.  I woke up at 2:45 AM (body alarm) and soon enough, a tornado warning crawl came across the screen.  It wasn't for my county, but it was for a county south of me that my friend lives in. 

My friend has M.S.  She suffers from neuropathy in her feet and for her to get up and get moving takes about an hour just to get all the right parts going in all the right places.  She can't just jump out of bed and run. 

So I called her at 3:15 AM. 

"Cj, I'm so sorry to call you in the middle of the night, but there is a tornado warning for [your] county." 

I tossed back and forth in my mind for a minute of what to do.  Here's the discussion that I had with myself:
-  Cj has MS.
-  She can't move that well.
-  She's in the middle of the country, on a hill away from close contact with neighbors and there is no tornado siren where she is at.
-  I didn't know if her partner was there to help her.  (Turns out he was.) 
-  She has three dogs to gather up and haul down with her.  She wouldn't leave them upstairs. 
-  I wasn't certain where the location was that the circulation was, but to boot up my computer and give it a run on Map Quest was me losing precious time for her to be contacted.
-  The storm was moving 55 MPH, which is kind of hauling at a pretty decent pace.

On my way to work, I called Cj to see how everything was.  She was at the dentist, but I did talk to her partner.  I asked him not to hate me.  He said that they didn't at all and that his friend ended up calling about an hour after I did for the very same reason. 

"At least you know that there are people who care about you!" 

He said that there was a tornado that touched down south of them and when I Map Quested the circulation location, I found that it was 4-5 miles away from their house.  Moving at 55 MPH, they wouldn't have had much time to act.  Cj's basement steps are kind of condensed and short.  It is difficult for her to navigate them anyhow, but squishy spaced steps are not run-down-them kind of steps. 

Cj e-mailed later (calling me darling) and said that she was absolutely not mad at me for phoning.  She had ear plugs in that muffled everything.  She would have never heard a tornado coming. 

I don't regret having called her.  I told her that had she gone by way of Mary Poppins and I knew that a potential tornado was coming towards them and didn't call and warn them, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself. 

What would you have done?

Smiles in my day:
-  It looks like our collard greens are coming up.  Spike (our iguana) will be so excited to have garden veggies again.  (You think I'm crazy?  He begs for tomatoes when they are on.) 
-  I functioned surprisingly well, considering the lack of sleep that I had.  Perhaps I need less sleep than I'm getting.
-  K- and I have a date to stuff hundreds of plastic eggs tomorrow for our annual family Easter egg hunt.  We'll stuff to see if I need more.  I can't recall how many I have, but I believe it's something around 400 or so.

Have a great day!

6 comments:

Rach said...

I'd have definitely called. Knowing CJ's MS issues, it was a good choice.

400 eggs? Really? My fingers hurt just thinking about it. ;o)

You know, we haven't seen much of Spike around here lately. Just sayin'...:o)

Bailey's Leaf said...

Spike is an inside his inside cage in the winter kind of guy for now. It's a nice, big home with heat lamps and such. Still, he loves going outside when he can. It's almost to that season again. Soon!

Sissy said...

I would have called too. Sometimes God just lays that kind of stuff on our heart and there are times when I haven't listened.

Bailey's Leaf said...

You aren't the only one. We've all had our times that we've turned a deaf ear.

Michelle said...

I think you absolutely did the right thing! You were thinking about your friend and knew all the ins and outs of the situation; she is very lucky to have such a concerned friend as you!

ChupieandJ'smama (Janeen) said...

Good for you! I was up all night on tornado watch. I managed 2 hrs of sleep until J woke up at 4:00 am with the stomach flu (hubs was out of town and all of this was on ME). Good for you for calling. I hope someone does that for me if we have a tornado warning in the middle of the night and I don't have medical issues to contend with.