Storms

Today's post is a brief interruption due to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes early this morning.  At about 12:30 AM, the NOAA weather radio starting blaring about every ten minutes with a new severe thunderstorm or tornado warning.  It finally shut up at 3:00 AM, but only because that's when the power went out.  Bud sleeps with a CPAP because he has severe sleep apnea.  Without the CPAP, he will either wake up every 15 seconds trying to breathe, or he will die.  Since he had to go to work today, he took his CPAP and our adapter that turns the cigarette lighter into a 3-prong plug, and went out to the van to sleep.  He had electricity, he was dry, he was warm because there's a Snuggie in the van and he turned the engine on so he wouldn't run the battery down with the CPAP so he had the heat on as well.  There is also a pillow in the van since I sleep most of the time when we are on trips to or from Baltimore.  It keeps me from getting car sick.  But, it still must have been hard to sleep with all that wind and rain battering the van all night.  I was tempted to go out and tell him to move the van out of our driveway so he wouldn't be near any trees, but it was raining and blowing so hard I didn't go back out; I just prayed.  I didn't get back to sleep because I had three very antsy dogs to handle.  Finally at 6:00 AM, I woke him up so he could get dressed to go to work.  He left the house with no coffee, more than a little rumpled, more than a little grumpy, and a brand new toothbrush and travel tube of toothpaste in his hand.  As he was getting back in the van to leave, we looked down the driveway and discovered the power of prayer and just how lucky he was.  The tree did not fall close to the van at all.

 










I went back to bed until the power came back on at 8:00 AM.  Then I called Duke Energy to report our little tree problem.  It is now almost 3:00 PM and I have not heard hide nor hair from Duke.  It may have something to do with the hundreds of thousands of other people in North Carolina without power.  Since it will only affect my house if this power line breaks, I suspect we are pretty far down on the priority list.  Still, I don't think I'll be walking down my driveway to the mailbox until that tree is gone.  I'll take the scenic route through the farmer's field next door and down to the road.  I sure hope they get here before that line breaks.