Can Anyone Else Feel A Breeze?

Oklahoma weather is insane. I thought the weather in New Orleans was unpredictable. Jeez! Thursday evening the wind began to pick up. It seemed to come out of nowhere.


My baby girl had a Girl Scout egg hunt. The boy was able to participate since he’s been dubbed an official Girl Scout Brother and has been unofficially adopted by the girls…except my daughter; she wishes they’d all take him home so she can be a “lonely” child (I think she means “only”).

During the egg hunt, the wind blew up the dust and made the leaves on the ground whip up into spirals. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke from the grass fires that raged in the distance and a milky haze filled the sky causing the mountains to resemble ghosts. It resembled early morning fog. The evening sun struggled to shine through. None of this stopped the children from their hunting game. They ran carelessly around the fields finding their brightly colored eggs filled with sweets and trinkets, oblivious to any danger.

Later that night, the winds blew violently with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. Many times during the night, I awoke to the howling of the winds whipping through the trees as branches were snapped and thrown against the house. My daughter ended up coming to the door to ask to sleep in my bed. The commotion outside had woken her up as well and probably scared the shit out of her.

The next day as I was running errands, I noticed trees ripped from the ground by the roots and fences toppled over. Branches were everywhere. Many homes were missing shingles but the wind was relentless. It was still bludgeoning the landscape with fury.

After school, I dropped my son off at a friend’s home for a sleepover (is that what you call what boys do??). My daughter and I headed to Wal-Mart in search of a futon to put into Buddy’s old room. The wind was still blowing around something terrible and when my daughter went to get out of the truck the wind snatched that door and nearly flung her onto the pavement. Luckily, there was no vehicle parked next to us or our door would have crashed into it causing some awful damage.

As we exited the truck, my daughter called over to me that she couldn’t close the door. When I came around the truck to the passenger side, I had to jerk the door nearly as hard as I could to get it to become unstuck. I assumed the door had been whipped open further than it was supposed to and had just needed to be yanked back into place. We went ahead into Wal-Mart and I didn’t think another thing about it.

When we returned to the truck, girl child went to get back in and called me over because she couldn’t open it now. I walked over and gave the door a quick tug and the awful sound of metal filled my ears. I looked over in the direction of the hinges and saw that the door was slightly over the corner of the fender. There was chipped paint and I could see where some of the metal was bent. I could tell that the door was crooked too. On the drive home, I could hear the wind coming in through the door. It sounded like I was driving with the windows cracked.

After we returned home, I called the insurance company and they set me up with a local body shop to get an estimate. Today, I dropped by the shop to have them take a look at it. They are going to need to replace the entire fender which is going to run roughly $1400 and once they remove the door it is possible that the hinges will need to be replaced as well. Thank goodness for insurance! I will only need to pay my deductible.

The guy at the body shop was able to make a minor adjustment to try to prevent any water from coming into the truck. Although the great state of Oklahoma hasn’t seen a good rain in I don’t even know how long, I was sure the door was leaking.  Why?  Because being the genius I am I decided it would a good idea to go through the carwash to clean my dusty ass truck.

Each time the water jets came across the door, water trickled down the window. Sometimes my genius shines. I’m telling you!

Now I wait. Apparently from what the girl doing my paperwork told me, I’m not the only person that was lucky enough to get some vehicle damage from the crazy wind. It looks like it will be the beginning of May before they can get me in.

One good thing is we had an existing dent on the fender that I was planning on getting an estimate for anyway. Since the wind messed up the door on the same side, I was told that the fender needs to be replaced anyway.

So although it sucks that I can’t use the door right now, at least, I can kill two birds with one stone. Also, for the time being, I don’t have to listen to my children bicker over who is going to sit in the front seat. Thank goodness for small favors.

Fantastic Friday Five #2

Another Friday arrives and with it brings the second installment of Fantastic Friday Five. Like I said last week, this is basically my lazy post of random filler that doesn’t seem to fit into a post on its own. Also, I feel like I owe it to myself to do something outright corny from time to time. So, without further ado, here is Fantastic Friday Five for your reading pleasure.


1.) My children have been home since Tuesday thanks to a lovely winter storm. Being a southern girl at heart, Oklahoma is the furthest north I’ve ever lived and it almost isn’t even Oklahoma. Seriously if I drive about forty minutes, I’ll cross the Texas border. When it snows in the south everything shuts down…EVERYTHING! Even though we barely have a half of foot of snow, I’m a New Orleans girl and have NO BUSINESS driving in the snow.
                                                       
                                       
Not to mention somewhere Al Gore is dancing a jig and screaming “Suck it, bitches!” Cross your fingers, my friends, that Mr. Gore stays out of the mad scientist laboratory in his basement and my children return to school on Monday.

2.) Oh, Netflix, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Since my husband has been gone, I have gotten myself into the habit of going to sleep while streaming movies and television shows on my laptop. I’ve watched all six seasons of The Kids in the Hall already. Currently, I am venturing through the third season of Reno 911.

3.) I made ruined some Salisbury steak this week. As I said previously, I have no business driving in the snow so when we ran out of milk I improvised (and not in that clever way the folks on Who’s Line Is It Anyway do). Normally, I would use evaporated milk in place of regular milk but guess what; we were out of that too. So, instead, I decided to use almond milk. Well, word from the wise (err, experienced) apparently when you heat up almond milk it gets a bitter citrus taste that will devastate your gravy unless you were going for the whole rotten lemon lime beefy taste. It was no surprise when the kids turned their noses up at it but when the canine garbage disposal turned his nose up at beef smothered in gravy you KNOW that shit was rank.

4.) Two words…Blog Hop. I’ve been linking up to a few of these in hopes to find blogs to read and I’m amazed by the amount of blogs out there that are dedicated to free samples and reviewing stuff. I’m convinced that most people only link up for followers as I’ve gotten many comments basically saying things to the effect of “Hey, I’m following you. Please follow me.”  *rolls eyes*

5.) Lastly, Tiffany over at Shhhhh! Just Between U & Me thinks I’m sexy and she gave me an award to prove it. Of course, I have to share my crown with four other ladies. When you get a moment, take a swing over and tell Tiff “Hi”. She’s pretty hot herself.

Well, friends, that about wraps it up for this installment of Fantastic Friday Five. More posts by yours truly coming soon.

Wicked Weather

Thursday night I headed to the kids' school for one of those beginning of the year open houses.  Normally, parents are bombarded with papers and handouts but not this year.  We were informed that due to cutbacks we would have to sit through a PowerPoint presentation representing the school covering key points like contact information, meal prices, dismissal information, etc etc etc...basically everything in the school handbook given out when you enroll your child.  They encouraged us to take notes. 

Afterwards you went to each child's individual classroom to get more information from the teacher.  The teacher went over the daily schedule, the grading scales, and the basic syllabus for the year.  It's all the same stuff just a different teacher explaining it to you. 

My son acted an ass the whole time and after numerous warnings I told him to just go to his room and go to bed when we got home.  By the time I got back home it was after 7pm.  It was a good thing we got home when we did.  Shortly after the sky cracked open and let the ground have it.  The tornado sirens were going off and you could hear the neighborhood dogs freaking out.

I told the kids to be prepared to go into the bathroom if needed.  My son can be quite a smart ass.  He asked if he had to stay in his room since he was punished.  I told him I was going to make him stand outside.

In the end we didn't see any tornadoes which is a good thing but the earth got some much needed and welcomed rain.  Since all that wicked weather we've had some glorious temperatures in the mid 70s accompanied by a cool breeze.  It a small reminder that autumn is coming.  My fireplace is calling my name.  C'mon cold weather!!