There's No Place Like Home, But Good Luck Getting There

This summer, the section of I-35 between central Iowa and southern Kansas has seen plenty of activity by our family, both immediate and extended.  My mom and Mark's most recent foray north included golf and a trip to see the movie Inside Out, which Mom and I decided must have been written by experts in child development or mental health or something, because it was the kind of movie where the kids get a kick out of it but the more boisterous laughter is really issuing from the adults.  It was sharp and smart and so entertaining.  I can't wait to see it again.

The day after the movie found the kids and I in Kansas, trying to make our way from the site of the funeral to my mom's house.  I don't have a smart phone or any kind GPS when traveling, so I broke out the handy dandy Kansas map out of the glove compartment- as in, a real, paper map.  The kind that doesn't talk to you and is impossible to properly re-fold.  It was delightful.

After consulting said delight, (and, ahem, missing a turn or two) I decided that if I just kept turning onto highways headed south interspersed with a turn on a westerly highway every so often, I would eventually get to mom's house.  I knew vaguely where I was, at least in terms of our relation to state borders, so I wasn't too fussed about knowing our exact arrival time or perhaps accidentally taking a slightly more scenic route.

At one point, Mom called, trying to find out where I was.  I told her my sort-of plan, she sighed "Kristy!" in exasperation, which I gotta say, really took me back, and we hung up.  Then I laughed because I haven't heard my name said in quite that way in some time, and I proceeded to entertain the children with impressions of my mom saying my name.  They were in stitches.

As it turns out, however, there was a reason for her frustration:  She called again shortly thereafter and told me I needed to get it in gear, as there was a huge storm headed for my hometown.  Derek had warned me that the radar showed a wide storm system sweeping across Kansas, but come on!  Trying to kill its citizens with rain and hail and lightning and twisters is what this state does in the summer.  And spring.  Aaaand sometimes the fall.  This particular storm was severe enough to have my mom worried; she and Mark were monitoring the weather from the lobby of a Kansas City hotel lobby, having been herded from their rooms by hotel staff because of tornadoes in the area.

I pinpointed our location on the (paper, manual, figure-it-out-yourself, man-I-love-those-things) map, and sped up the teeniest bit.  It helped that no one was out, although that also contributed to the eerie sensation, especially as a giant wall cloud began to creep over the landscape.  The tiny towns we did briefly slow down for sported people standing on their front porches, staring at the sky- NEVER a good sign in Kansas.  When you see Kansans in this stance, you'd best keep a wary eye out for funnel clouds.  

We drove about half an hour through spooky premature darkness before the wind suddenly picked up and the sky tried to drown us.  Long, long story short, we finally made it to the house, but not before the kids freaked out and I told them that there were NO MORE QUESTIONS UNTIL WE GOT TO GRANDMA'S LORRI'S, because if you ask me, "Are we about to die?" one more time, I'm going to tell you the truth, Adelaide, and you're not going to like it.  All that child-silence gave me plenty of time to reflect on how you forget what severe weather actually looks like if you've lived away from it for long enough- don't get me wrong, we get storms here, but Iowa severe weather : Kansas severe weather :  : any Scooby-Doo villain : any villain played by this guy:

A million bucks says his mom took one look at him at birth and shuddered.  Thanks for the nightmares, Cillian Murphy.

Full of Hot Air

We first moved to our little town in central Iowa the first of June, almost three years ago.  It wasn't a particularly tumultuous summer, weather-wise, but for some reason, the tornado sirens were going off at least once a week- and I'm talking about outside of the weekly drills, before any smart alecks pounce on that.

It usually occurred during a storm, prompting us to check the radar for twisters, and once even scooping our two sleeping children out of their beds to carry them down to the glorified root cellar we refer to as our basement.

It wasn't always stormy when we heard the familiar wail of the sirens, however, and we were befuddled.  It got to the point where we started ignoring the sirens, a dangerous practice.

One day that summer the kids and I were playing in the front yard when our neighbor drove by.  She slowed and rolled her window down, yelling, "Hey guys!" over the sirens that were once again blaring.

I yelled back, "Is there a tornado headed our way?  I wasn't aware we were in for any severe weather today."

Right about then the sirens wound down, and our kind neighbor was able to explain that those aren't tornado sirens; they're high-wind sirens.  They go off any time we have high winds in our area.

Then she asked, "Do you get a lot of wind down in Kansas?"

To my credit, I checked the belly laughs about to come rumbling up out of my mouth, and merely smiled and said, "Yes.  Yes, we do."  In her defense, I'm pretty positive she's never been to my home state.  This may come as a shock to you, but Kansas is long on wheat and cows but short on tourism.

Here's the thing:  Kansas is indeed windy.

I remember watching two-year-old Adelaide try to stand up in the driveway at Derek's parents' house, who live out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas.  She kept getting knocked down by the wind, over and over again, before finally giving up and just crawling over to me.

It's the kind of place that sells little wooden dolls with wild, knotted hair and kitschy sayings on their bellies like, "Just Another Windy Day in Kansas."

It's the third-windiest state in the union, behind North Dakota and Texas.  The windiest city in the nation is not Chicago, but Dodge City, Kansas.


I can't imagine having a high-wind siren in my hometown; I doubt a day would go by that it wasn't blaring.

Now, to be fair, Iowa also gets its share of wind; it rounds out the top ten windiest states in America, a list comprised exclusively of states that make up a strip down the middle of the continental U.S.


Having grown up in a place where you get blown around a lot, I enjoy a good windy day.  I also enjoy wind maps, and I recently stumbled upon a really cool one that shows real-time wind patterns across our country.  You'll notice that Kansas is right in the morass of white lines that make up tornado alley.  This map also allows you to zoom in and see wind speeds in different areas. Click here to check it out.

A quick disclaimer with that map:  I don't know how accurate it is, but it does have a link on there that will take you to a more traditional wind map, which is also pretty neat to check out.  Also, it works best if you view it when using Google Chrome as your browser.  FYI.

Looking at this map also drives home the reasoning for Derek's preference for golfing anywhere other than Kansas; apparently it becomes to difficult to direct a small ball towards a hole when the wind keeps blowing it off course.


Note:  I wrote this post yesterday, before a bunch of tornadoes- some reports state as many as 13-  ripped their way through Texas.  Our prayers are with everyone effected by this newest rash of twisters.

Updated Miscellany/ A Miscellaneous Update

Any number of times over the past few weeks, I have been asked about the status of a few specific topics we've discussed on this blog.

So, as per your request, here is an update on Atticus's nighttime crying, my youngest sister and her husband (you know, the ones who went through that tornado), and, most importantly, my tulips.



Why don't we go ahead and talk about the tulips- that way you're not distracted while reading the rest of this post.

Ta-daaaaa!

They made it!  Even though those rabbits ate them right down to the ground, they persevered and grew tall enough to bloom.  This right here is proof that good can triumph over evil.

Well, that and Jesus triumphing over the Devil.  But I think my tulips vs rabbits is a pretty apt illustration, too.



Moving on to Atticus.  He's still not sleeping through the night.  He went three nights in a row sleeping all night long last week, which would have lulled me into complacency were I not the type of person that keeps their expectations nice and low.  I find that life has fewer nasty surprises that way.

Rest assured (pun intended), he's now waking up at least once a night, leaving me in a fog of fatigue during the day.  I'm going to go ahead and use that as an excuse for any unusual behavior you've ever noticed in me.  I'm sure that's what it is.



As for Steph and Clinton, it's official (at least according to the folks at the insurance company):  It was a tornado that peeled the roof off their house, picked it up and shifted it on its foundation, sucked out a part of a barn, and twisted the tree trunks in their yard.

I went with Steph to look at the house during our trip south a few weeks ago.  It was pretty freaky.  I meant to take pictures, but forgot my camera.  At least I got photos of my flowers, right?  I obviously have my priorities straight. 


Steph is now six weeks from her due date.  Steph and Clinton are staying with members of his generous family- and by generous I mean a willingness to give to others without expecting reciprocation, not generous as in big in numbers- although that's true, too.  Glad we cleared that up.

They're still trying to figure out exactly where to go and, you know, live.  Tornadoes are really good at messing things up, aren't they?

Yet another reason you read this blog:  Painful statements of the obvious.



So, there you go:  Atticus is still crying and depriving his parents of sleep, my sister and her husband are homeless, but my tulips conquered their foe Rabbit and kept me from resorting to tactics that would scare the neighbors.