Holy Crap.

Last night was probably the scariest and worst nights of my life. My husband and I were awake at 1:30am watching the UFC finale. We didn't get to see the end of the last fight, and it was a good fight.

Switching around the channels during a commercial we land on a local channel. Tornado Warning. Vanderburgh County. We see the projected path of their "tornado rings" on the weather screen. The red shaded area that looks like a < includes where we live. Where we are right NOW. Holy crap.

I pull my pants up over my nightgown, shove my shoes on w/out untying them. Throw a warm shirt on over the top of my nightgown. My husband grabs shoes, a cell phone, some candles and a lighter. I throw soft stuff into our bathroom to cover up with (warm too...if it comes to that). Throw the cats in there too....hard to do with two cats. We try to figure out what to do. I'm so scared that I shake the cell phone out of my hand trying to talk to my mom. We still have some time. My husband wants to get out of there, "If we stay here we die!" he tells me. We live on the second floor. The top floor, where the roof is, and roofs blow off. I refuse to leave. We try a downstairs neighbor, the maintenance man. He's not home. We open the door, contemplating on driving away.

One lightning strike gives us a peek at the clouds forming an abstract verion of "Don't even try it." So we go back inside.

I grab my phone and shut myself in the bathroom, in the bathtub. With a pillow on my head. Lot of good THAT will do, but hey, I might avoid getting a splinter on my forehead. My husband never comes in there, like he should. He's watching the weather on the local station. It's turned up so I can hear. I keep hearing "Ohio River" "Newburgh" everywhere south and east of where we are. That's good, in case you were wondering.

The weatherman says to, "Make sure you put as many people between you and the storm as possible." People? That's a little rude isn't it? Meaning walls, of course.

Gradually I'm assured that it has passed us. Barely. A 1/4 mile wide tornado, an F3 (or worse, they think), passed us by 3 miles.

My mom says that it's so scary when stuff like this happens, but isn't it a great feeling when it's over and you're okay (this is before we know the damage it caused). But no. It didn't feel good. I haven't felt better because I want to buy a house, or at the very least rent an apartment on the ground level.

Usually stuff like this happens and you're disconnected. This time:

• my brother in law is close to us so was in the path of the storm as well.
• I thought my cousin lived in the trailerpark that was demolished (17 people dead so far) but he had moved a month earlier.
• My 18 yr old sister in law is nowhere to be found. Not answering her phone, suspected to be staying at a guy's house in the city that was hit.
• Two friends live in the path of the storm. - one had a board go through the wall of his mom's bedroom.
• The other has a girlfriend who lives in the next town the tornado decides to visit.
• A co-worker's father's girlfriend was in the trailer park. Intensive care, losing a lot of blood.
• An old co-worker used to live in the trailer park. Not sure if she still does.
• My boss lives in the third city the tornado hit.
• My mother in law lives a few counties over where the line of storms is heading - although the tornados seemed to be dying off.

But I am so lucky.