What's in your tornado kit?

I know we moved to the midwest but the reality of being in "tornado alley" has only just begun to sink in for this solidly northeastern girl. 

While Michael was still at work on Wednesday in his nice, cozy basement office (I'm not sure he feels that way on normal weather days), and while Pep and I sat at home, a string of very severe weather began to make its way through our area. The meteorologists has been predicting it for days, telling St Louis residents that the conditions were "very favorable" for tornadoes. We were placed in the "high-risk" area on the national map and I was ready with the TV on, to watch the action unfold. Unfortunately, nothing else was prepared. 

You see, up until this point, while we had been under tornado warnings on past bad weather days, and the sirens had blared before, there had never been anything resembling a tornado heady towards our house. And as I am sure you are all aware, the terrible tragedy that happened the past week in Joplin, MO has scared everyone into being a bit more diligent.

Wednesday was a different story though. I had the TV blaring while frantically cleaning (the nervous energy of tornado warnings makes me a great cleaner!) when I heard that there was rotation in the atmosphere and a funnel cloud had been spotted just a few miles south of our house in the shopping area that I frequent daily. At this point, the TV announcer suggested that anyone in the path of this particular cell move to the basement, naming our neighborhood in his list. 

Then I thought, "Oh, Crap! I have nothing ready!". Thankfully, we were still a bit away from the funnel cloud, and the TV was predicting that we would have 17 minutes before anything would be close. What better time to prepare an emergency kit, really?

So, here's my 15 minute tornado kit ended up looking like:

1. Sneakers (with the nasty pair of socks that I've been wearing all week to work out in. Sorry, I only own two pair, so new pairs are doled out sparingly.), cause shiny gold flip-flops just won't cut it.

2. Water

3. Food (a banana and a granola bar)

4. Mag Lite flashlight (I hope Preston isn't reading this, and if you're reading this Cayley, don't show it to him. He left it at my house 8 or so years ago and I never got it back to him.) with a pack of extra batteries.

5. Money, credit cards, insurance cards, etc

6. Phone

7. A sweater

8. Kitten in his carrier

9. Kitten food and treats
10. A book (specifically Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated)

Funny story about Pep and the carrier: 

He actually jumped in the carrier as soon as I pulled it out. While he doesn't like being shut in it the carrier, he does think it's quite a comfy bed to lay on (as you can see in the picture above, taken later in the evening before I got around to putting it away). So after he willingly jumped in his carrier I zipped it up and continued with my frantic packing. I opened the door to the basement to get a baggie of his food out of the stairwell closet and heard a loud "Meow" fly by me down the stairs. It seems that Pepin was worried I would forget him in the shuffle and figured it was every cat for himself! I was worried at first that he had ripped through his carrier but in reality, I had simply forgotten to fasten the clasps after zipping him in. 

I probably should note that Pep is slightly obsessed with exploring the basement and probably just saw his chance with the door wide open and me paying little attention (thinking he was contained.)

All ended well though. That particular funnel cloud never touched down and while the severe weather lasted a few more hours, it mostly involved heavy rain and some hail.

The moral of this stupid story is that we need to get an actual kit together so we're not scurrying around and nearly losing the kitten in the scuffle.

And also, I may have some unhealthy anxiety when it comes to tornado scares.

On a Happier note:

This happened two years ago yesterday on a cliff in Hawaii.

We celebrated with a movie and sushi and I have to say that I am so happy with the little life and little family we've made (minus the tornado alley thing). 

Two wonderful years down, and here's to many, many more to come!

Happy Birthday to my favorite set of twins!

Look at those cute kids back in 2003. They turned 25 today! We always wish we could celebrate with Laura, but as usual, we are separated by many miles. Thankfully, we have a family wedding to attend in a few weeks and will be able to see her and maybe have a drink to celebrate the milestone Birthday.

 Michael's present was in two parts this year. He got to pick out this absinthe that we have been wanting to try and I snuck around to buy him two blueberry plants that can be grown in containers for now but will be easy to transplant into the ground once we have a yard of our own. The boy loves his blueberries :-)

 We had to do a bit of fenangling to get the mixing just right. To attain the perfect cloudiness you must slowly drip water into the absinthe a drop at a time and although you can't tell from a picture, that water jug is really heavy. Eventually we filled salt shaker (from Michael's extensive thrift store silver collection) with the ice water and using a cork in the fill hole to vary the speed at which the water flowed out. 

 For his Birthday dinner, Michael opted for a chicken fricassée with homemade spaetzel (we found a spaetzel maker at a kitchen store for $8 -- I can't tell you how excited I was!).

And Pepin spent the evening trying to fit in the bottom of the pot we bought for the blueberries.

Home Improvement Part 2: A weekend of progress

 Over this past weekend, Michael got me motivated to finish some of the half finished bits and pieces lying around the living room.  I've done a poor job of taking before pictures of our recent projects but nonetheless, I will show you the finished products.

I mentioned in the post about my parents' visit that we worked on hand-caning one chair but I realize now that I never showed the good, finished picture of the piece.

Silly me, here you go.

 Thanks to lots of help from my mother I was able to complete the hand-caned chair on the right. After my family departed I was left with a pressed (pre-woven) cane chair that I needed to figure out how to do on my own (shown on the left hand side, for comparison of the hand weave vs. pre-weave). 

 Thanks to the modern marvel that is youtube, I was able to watch a video 2 or 3 times then Michael and I were a able to replace the old caning within 30 minutes. Although I made a small mistake on the spline (the piece that goes around the edges of the cane), I must say that I can see why the pre-woven cane was invented, if only because this chair took 30 minutes to complete as opposed to the 10 or so hours that the hand-woven cane demanded. (That isn't to say that pressed-cane doesn't posses its own challenges.)

 I also worked last week on sanding and staining this adorable little tea tray that my dad made for me when I was 10 and still had tea parties. I don't know why I never got around to finishing it until now. 

 Also on our to-do list was this all-important wine rack. As you can see in the background, we finished bottling this year's 45 bottles of wine and were severely lacking a place to put them. Michael is putting on the primer in this picture.

 Here it is with in the finished red/orange color. (LOVE!)

 And holding some of our wine. As you can see, we need to add something to the bottom of a leg so it doesn't wobble.

On a slightly related note: if you have a very quick little kitty and are painting, lock him in a different room. Pepin was not very happy with the bath he received after this little mishap and still has some peach-tinged fur on his back.