Echoes.

Being diagnosed with OCD at 27 or so was a big AH HA! moment in my life.
I never thought I was crazy, but it always seemed to me that other people simply COULDN’T worry this much on a day to day basis.

Now, my worries have never been debillitating. 
I still function.
I just function in a much more prepared way than normal people.
To a ridiculous extent.

As I get older and can identify the patterns better I notice that in some ways I’m getting worse.
Always a worrywart, I now carry the heavyweight title in that category and tend to drive my husband insane.

A few fears that were always a problem for me?
The dark.  I’m terrified of the dark.  I have managed to begin sleeping, for the first time in my life, with the lights off consistently.

Storms.  I’m terrified of storms.  Severe storm warnings and tornado warnings will send my heart into a rate that only a marathon could match.  Thirty minutes after getting home during these warnings I will have turned one of the bathrooms into a state of the art storm shelter – with my daughter and my dogs tucked as safely as possible inside for the duration of the event.   I’ll monitor the tv channels and text messages from my storm chaser friends with the same sharpness that a hawk uses before downing it’s prey.  I use my super hearing (not exaggerating on this one – I can hear fairly well for a few miles… unfortunately there is no siren in that radius) to keep track of the wind outside and my sheer paranoia keeps me trudging from window to window, watching the cloud formations that so often warn of bad weather.

Which brings me to tonight.
Major weather event planned for the next 24 hours or so.  A ‘Tornado Swarm’ as one website called it.
I’ve never seen those two words together before and my heart has complied quite willingly with the fear overtaking my body.

My list of preps is ready.
A shower – southern girls aren’t going to be caught in a disaster dirty – we’ll be clean with clean underwear.
blankets, mattresses to the ready.
Clean water.
ID on hand.
Rubber soled shoes.
Weather radio – a new one purchased today!  With extra batteries.
A fully charged phone.
Flashlights, candles, batteries, and a generator.

When I think about this from a distance I’m amused at how nutty I sound.
But.
I’d rather be a prepared nut than an unprepared idiot.

And this is where my husband and I differ.

I’d love to move away from Tornado Alley.
Facing blizzards – no big deal.  wah.
Hurricanes?  A couple days prep BUT the threat of losing everything all at once.
Earthquakes?  HELLS to the no.
Wildfires?  I don’t think so, California.

You get the idea.

When Abbey gets older and I have more freedom, you’ll see me ANYWHERE but in a tornado prone area.
Complete with a basement AND a storm shelter.  Just in case.
But until then?

Well.  Just let me know if you think of something I left off of my short list.