Trepidation

Doesn't it always seem to be the case that anticipation of an unpleasant event creates a greater amount of fear? What I mean is this - when I get blood drawn, I always tell the tech not to warn me before poking me. If I don't know the stick is coming, I won't freak out. If they tell me before they stick me, I'll tense up and freak out. I'd much rather not know that any unpleasantness is coming my way until it's already there.

I live in tornado alley. I have all my life, with the exception of college and grad school, spent in Chicago (oh, how I miss it). I am very used to bad weather. I like the bad weather. It excites me. When the sirens go off, I go outside to look at the sky.

However, for the last three days the forecasters have been predicting a huge outbreak of extremely severe weather for tonight. Normally, you don't know it's coming until it's here. But now, today, I've had all day to think about tonight, and the very real possibility that my house and family will incur some sort of damage.* Husband works evenings, and so I will be here, home alone with both girls, all night long. How can I carry both of them down our very narrow cellar stairs? Where will I put them (we have the world's creepiest basement *ever*. I may post pictures sometime.)? What if Something Bad happens?

Normally I do not worry about any of this. Husband is the worrier about weather. I like the storms. But one of my recurrent nightmares, the one that pops up whenever I feel like things in my life are spinning out of control, is that I'm caught in a tornado and I'm trying to hold on to one or both of the girls and they get sucked out of my arms. I've had this dream at least six times in the last two years. What if it was an omen?

Now that I know it's coming, I'm nervous. If it came up suddenly out of nowhere, I wouldn't bat an eye. But I am definitely freaked, mostly because I've had too much time to think about what could go wrong, and also because I've seen firsthand what can go wrong in situations like these. Stupid imagination. It is running away with me. Help! Come back!

On an entirely unrelated note, God bless kellymom.com. She has helped me to diagnose what is going on in my right boob - remember? She of the plugged milk duct? I traced the problem to its source (ha! get it?) which is actually a milk blister. I thought I had it cleared up last time, but the blister is back. It blocks enough area that the milk ducts on the entire top half aren't able to drain, resulting in some very localized and lopsided engorgement. Ouch!

She also enabled me to figure out the cause of the blister - oversupply - and how to treat it so that it will heal and not get infected, I hope. Yay for the internets! This is the second time in two weeks that I've had this problem, and it's icky. I don't want to see a third time, that's for sure!

Anyway, if we're all still alive tomorrow I will post an "after" picture of my saucepan - the one with the melted silicone - for comparison. It shines like the top of the Chrysler building!


*We've already had several deadly tornadoes within a 9-block - 30 mile radius of my house, and it's only early April. The weather this year, it is crazy! People we know have lost everything, while we have not even had a broken window from the hail.