Thursday, June 5, 2008

To The Rescue!

I was in the shower this afternoon after running, when I leaned my head back to put shampoo in my hair, and found motion pretty limited. Why? Near as I can figure, with the threat of death the past few nights due to the severe weather and having an emergency or two at work (now a work emergency, a "get me some help" emergency), I had created a big stress knot in the back of my neck which has yet to subside.

Seems worth it, since I've been kinda sorta heroic lately. Yesterday, before all the severe weather hit, a kid took a tumble on our grounds of the museum where I work as I was walking by. There was a lot of blood, so while someone comforted the kid when I ran back to the office full speed and grabbed the first aid kit, got disinfectants on the scrapes and band-aids on the boo boos. No bigee, but if I hadn't been around it could have been.

That night we went out for dinner and got trapped in the restaurant as the news people read off the current address of the approaching tornado. It missed us, but I had to run, grab the car in a rain that soaked in seconds (losing my glasses in the process), and do some stunt driving to avoid the impromptu lakes that had formed between me and my house. Again, not heroic but definitely exciting. I stayed up half the night watching reports and making sure we weren't going to blow away - guarding the gate, as it were.

Today, another storm hit just in time for Summer School where I work, and a couple of kids got trapped. No one had noticed, so it was over the newly formed lake in my car, up onto the grass and out into the rain to pile kids into my car and onto dryer locations. Again, soaked but useful. And, tonight, our basement flooded, and the wife and I moved fast enough to staunch the soaking our belongings were receiving. Moving furniture at high speed to get to the water shut off valve is better than caffeine.

Yup, that knot aint going anywhere, but it feels kind of good to be legitimately useful, especially when the difference you make is right in front of you.

I'm sick to freaking death of storms.

2 comments:

W.B. Kelso said...

E'yup. With the latest round, I got water cascading down my sewer connection. Not sewer water. Thank Jeebuz.
And driving home last night in that monsoon positively sucked. Needed a pontoon to get down Koenig.

Asinine Army said...

Is your basement flooding? Can I send a fork lift for the comics?