Storm's a-brewin!

If you live in the DFW area or just really like watching the Weather Channel, you may have heard of the phenomenal storm that came out of nowhere on Wednesday night. I am oblivious of weather forecasts, is Willard Scott still doing them? I also had the dubious honor of working with my team at the office until about 2AM (yay!). I later crawled into bed and slept for what felt like 5 minutes, before we were awoken by a maelstrom outside of our window at 4:15AM. It sounded like someone put our house in an automated car wash - water pounding, wind gusting, etc. Then the tornado sirens went off.

I'm still half asleep wondering where my dream mates Alf and Cookie Monster vanished off to, when Emily says with a sense of urgency, "Quick, go get the baby and bring him in the closet." It seriously took my brain a couple of seconds to process her request - "Baby? What baby?" Then a slice of realization cut through my mental cobwebs as I pictured the prototypical twister hitting our house just as I made a break for Benjamin's room - debris whirling at me as I dispatch it with swift punch and kick combos, barely making it to his crib just as Benjamin is about to be sucked out the window, clasping on to his booties and pulling him to safety.

The reality is that I strolled into his room, picked up a sleeping baby (again, how do babies sleep through storms and restaurants, but wake up if I take a hard swallow of water?) and carried him into our closet. We hung out there for 20 minutes, the storm passed and we all went back to sleep around 5-ish. And then my alarm went off after what seemed like 10 minutes of sleep - I had an early morning flight to catch, which ended up being 1 of the 2000 flights canceled by American Airlines (I'm considering class-action).

As I drove to the airport, I noticed that our surrounding area looked like God and Mother Nature played a game of Jenga - entire trees uprooted, huge branches splintered, foliage reconstructed in ugly piles in the road. Yet, three styrofoam peanuts that were in my front yard (origin unknown) the day before some how managed to not move an inch. But seeing the destruction made me very thankful that our house survived and that our family came out completely unscathed.

And I was too tired the night before to really acknowledge that I am totally responsible for this other human being. If there was no me, it wouldn't be able to survive. This is an incredibly basic concept, but it was the first time a "me-focused" person had to really look out for someone else incapable of helping themselves. I also recognized that this didn't even scratch the surface of things to come later in Benjamin's life - running across the street, kidnapping scares, getting into country music, etc.

On a totally unrelated note, onesies are multiplying in our closet like rabbits. I'll put away laundry and the amount seems like it quintuples each time. The only theory I have to explain this is when socks get lost in the dryer, they are quilted into onesies by some breed of gnome.