Evacuation Notice

                               
I wrote a whole blog about visiting the pumpkin patch with my humongous, adult-sized children but there are more pressing matters right now. Like, evacuating my home in preparation for Hurricane Matthew. On a side note, growing up my dad used to call pooping an "evacuation". If you had to poop, you were having an "evacuation notice." So, all this talk about evacuations has me chuckling and imagining that everyone is talking about pooping. Everyone on the South Carolina coast is having an evacuation notice.

                                               
I've had a bad feeling about the storm since this weekend. Feelings confirmed.

My husband left on Monday for a 2 week business trip in Texas. Before I dropped him off at the airport, he turned to me and asked, "Are you going to be OK?"
I laughed, "Don't you think it's a little late to be asking that question?"
"Good point."
Last night was his first night gone. I made brownies and watched Hocus Pocus with the girls. I checked the weather before bed and first thing this morning. I was concerned. This afternoon as I did the daily drop offs to marching band and gymnastics practice we listened to the governor's press conference about evacuating the coast. She said what my gut had been telling me for the past two days. We need to go.
I have family in North Carolina who has graciously offered to take us in and I'll spend tomorrow morning finishing packing, taking down my outdoor decorations, porch furniture, and gathering my pictures/important documents.

I'm over here in get-everything-together mode and my husband calls and says shit like, "I'm headed to dinner at the riverwalk" and "Did you know my hotel is only 2 blocks from the Alamo?"
                
I know many people that are riding out the storm and I don't judge them but I cannot do it alone with two kids. I don't think the flooding will be bad where I am, it's the wind speeds that frighten me. I liked in Oklahoma for 3 years and it truly traumatized me. During tornado season, we were on the alert for a storm every week it seemed. You would get 50-60 mph winds and the house would shake and there was this terrifying whistle.

I was 7 months pregnant with my youngest child, my oldest was almost 2 and we were having a really bad storm, probably 70 or 80 mph winds. The house was shaking, you could literally hear the glass rattling in the panes and whooshing like we were in a wind tunnel. The tornado sirens started going off, which is the freakiest thing ever. Think air raid, think end of the word-type shit. When the tornado sirens go off that means you better find shelter because you are in imminent danger.

All the rooms in the house had windows, so we pulled our mattress into the hallway. My husband and I huddled under it and I pulled my oldest daughter onto my lap and sang her songs to keep her calm and distracted. We prayed that a tornado wouldn't rip off our roof or blow trees or debris into our windows. We prayed to GOD to keep us alive and we waited out the storm.

One year, the windows at my husband's work got blown out from a bad storm. If you ask him about Oklahoma he'll say, "I don't know why they call it God's country when they have hail, tornadoes, earthquakes and locus swarms all the time."
             

We lived in a sturdy brick home then. The house I live in now is basically made out of toothpicks and pre-fab siding. If we stayed to ride out the storm, I could just see me and my daughters huddled in my walk-in closet for 12 hours. Not happening. I don't mess with high winds.

Tomorrow, we will head out. It will probably be some bullshit hassle. My kids will probably fight in the car and declare they have to pee a half hour into our trip. They will be bored after 40 minutes and eat all the snacks I pack within the first hour. Because they are my kids, and that is what they do.

It beats huddling in the closet though.