Can We Live Through August?

I was talking with my friend TS Elmwood the other day. She called to make sure we were ok after last week’s storms.

“I was reading Tom Skilling’s weather blog. Looks like things were pretty bad in some places.”

We actually spent about twenty minutes down on the first floor of our office building that afternoon, because there was a tornado warning for the city.

“Everything ok?”

The building is fine. A street about half mile north is closed, and there are some trees down. I walked around by the river today, and there is some flooding on the bikepaths, and the small bridges are closed. And there is some more serious flooding on the Fox River, farther north.

“And your house is ok?”

Much to our relief, it is. We just had a bit of water in the basement. The tree out back lost a bunch of small branches. One of the houses across the street lost a huge old tree.

“When I was kid growing up out that way in the suburbs, the power would always go out during storms.”

It does go out more than I thought it would out here. Ours was out most of the day Friday – I figure ComEd may have shut things down while they were picking up power lines.

“Was there a lot of damage in your area?”

Not right around our house, but it turns out that a tornado touched down a couple miles north of us. Lots of trees down, power lines down – I drove home that way on Thursday, so I must have gone through there only about an hour after the tornado did.

“I’m glad you’re all ok. I saw some scary looking pictures in the news.”

We’re all ok. I was home most of Friday -- with the power out, I spent several hours sitting by the window, catching on my reading, and catching up on petting cats.

“Awww. Hey, how is Will’s cat doing?”

Unfortunately, she died a few weeks ago.

“Oh no, that’s too bad. How are he and Mary doing?”

OK, I think, but I know Will is pretty down. They had that cat for like fourteen years. And one of their other cats had cancer last year, and now they are afraid that his cancer is back.

“That’s so sad.”

I know. Driving home from work last Thursday, during the storms, I kept worrying about our cats, because I knew they would be scared of the thunder of lightning. And they would have been really scared if the tree in our backyard had ended up in our kitchen.

“You know, it is even worse with kids. Worries, I mean.”

I know.

“Take care of yourself, K. And take care of covivant, and take care of those cats.”

Thanks. You take care of your family as well.