Procrastination Aids: Poetic Form

I am the tanka. The attention of others Is unnerving, and Since I try not to draw it, I'm left alone. Which is good. What Poetry Form Are You?

Compliments of Jennifer.

Friday Quote: On Meaning Inherent in Things

Things are saturated with significance. Meaning does not have to be injected into a story like juice injected into a cooked turkey. Things themselves are translucent with meaning, like paper translucent from grease. In poor houses on the frontier where people couldn't afford glass, the windows were paper rubbed with fat. The light streamed in, as did the winter cold and the summer heat, and everything was seen in that light, the light of the paper window, just the way that now, when we think of people living with great poverty and endurance, all we need to do is imagine a paper window: meaning glows in the thing.

...Meaning is trapped in the what of things. Meaning is held in the web of things like honey held in a comb, or a soap film held in a hoop, or a bundle of the sun's radiant energy held in the very green of chlorophyll. There is a physics of significance.

---Bonnie Friedman
in Writing Past Dark

The Vacuum Saga

Last year to celebrate our tax refund, I bought a new vacuum. Actually, I took our old, non-working vaccum into a shop to have it fixed and was accosted by Sid the Vacuum Salesman, who also owns the shop. Sid's Method of Operation is to look at one's old vacuum while tsking and then to tell one regretfully what a piece of worthless junk it is and why one should buy a Riccar vacuum. I have seen him in action with several customers, pushing 30 pound vacuums on little old ladies who came in to get a lightweight floor sweeper to accomodate their arthritis. Sid likes to interrupt; he doesn't like eye contact; and he tries to speak very fast, which is difficult because he stutters. Now, I don't begrudge Sid his stutter at all. What I DO object to is interruption and condescension, both of which Sid does in abundance. (Sometime I shall tell The Tale of the Sewing Machine Repair, too. But I digress and will begin to snarl.) After hearing Sid's snide comments about our old vacuum and his sung praises of the Riccar vacuum he was so determined to sell me, I shook him off and went home to do a little Web research. Lo and behold, the Riccar had excellent, excellent consumer reviews. Somewhat grudgingly, I went back and purchased one.

This year I took the still perfectly performing Riccar in for its free yearly maintenance, as prescribed by the service policy in the owner's manual. Sid wasn't in, but the young lady in the shop said she'd have it ready for me in 30 minutes. I was relieved. Marshfield is an hour's worth of driving (round trip) from our house, and with gas prices, I really wasn't wanting to have to leave it and come back another day. I poked around in the scrapbooking shop next door for 30 minutes, went back to Sid's, picked up the vacuum and returned home. The next time I attempted to use it, I discovered the beater bar no longer worked at all, and the floor/carpeting switch was not only jammed but had a huge gouge. I was not a happy camper.

I returned to the shop asking to talk to Sid and was told he wasn't in. I went home muttering under my breath. I waited a couple of days and called. I was told when he would be in. I returned. He was absent. I returned home again, breathing out fiery and intricate plots for using the beater bar in ways that would most certainly void the warranty. When the inner conflagration died down enough that my nostrils were merely wisping bits of smoke, I called once more and was assured that Sid was always in on Saturdays. I laid my plans accordingly.

You must understand that I am not a person who likes conflict. I don't like being angry with people. I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to damage relationships. I wanted to strangle Sid and his shopgirl with the powercord, yes, but I wanted to do it in a NICE way, mind you, a way that would assure their thinking well of me while they rubbed the scars on their throats, and above all, a way that would insure my being able to continue thinking well of myself. (I am not always a very nice person. Yes, I know this. What I do not understand is why that can be so satisfying.) Knowing I was torn between wanting to be kind and wanting to flay Sid alive with onboard attachments, I prayed on the half hour trip to the shop, prayed that the confrontation would be calm, that I would not lose my temper (because I am unable to speak at ALL when I become extremely angry--I cry, which considerably diminishes one's ability to be intimidating), and that I would come home with a fixed vacuum cleaner and not have to make another trip.

That evening when I returned home, I was able to write the following in my journal.

Today the vacuum saga came to a most satisfactory close. I took the Riccar in and found the shop crowded, Sid "helping" another woman, telling her what was wrong with her vacuum and doing his darnedest to sell her a Riccar. She looked up at me and my vacuum (which had "Riccar" emblazoned across its front), smiled and asked, "Is that a Riccar that you have?"

"Yes it is," I replied quietly.

She walked over to me to look at both my vacuum and the other Riccars on display, over which Sid was still making enthusiastic and encouraging salesman noises.

"And do you like it?"

"I do," I answered, and seeing the heavens open and the perfect opportunity descending from the skies, I took it. "I love this vacuum very much," I said earnestly. "It does a very good job, an excellent job." I let woe cloud my face, dropped my eyes and shook my head regretfully, "The problem I've had is with the service."

There was a beat of dead silence, during which the lady's eyes widened first with concern and then with a glint of amusement as she turned to Sid, her eyebrows raised. "Oh, really?" she asked, still smiling.

Sid was at my side in a moment and had my Riccar upside down against the counter with a screwdriver opening it up before I could finish answering his very courteous questions about what the problem had been. He had it fixed and ready to go in 3 minutes.

I feel a little guilty about the satisfaction and amusement I took (and am continuing to take) from Sid's tight spot there in the shop. Not nearly guilty enough, most likely, though, as it isn't enough to keep me from enjoying it in remembrance. Upon my arrival home and the hearing of the tale, Great Scott said, his grin reminiscent of Alice's Chesire Cat, "You are a wickie, wickie woman!" The fact that this was uttered with obvious admiration did nothing to shame me, I have to admit.

You Know You Live in the Ozarks When...

1. Your twelve year-old daughter comes home from Safety Day at school with a package of goodies that contain ear plugs (for using when shooting a gun or running heavy farm machinery), scads of fliers on West Nile Virus, brochures from a farmers' life insurance company and a Buck knife catalogue.

2. Regardless of how hard you work to correct her, your nine year-old pronounces "hundred" as "hunnerd."

3. The 'possums walk back and forth under the porch swing late at night while you're sitting out enjoying the quiet. If you put out cat food, you can pet them.

4. Your elderly neighbor shows up asking if you'd like a turkey if he gets one this season, and then tells you if he sees one out of season, he'll bring that by, too.

5. He does this because you stopped last month to see if you could help him get his wayward cow back in the field (and off the road), and he's appreciative.

6. Rain falls steadily in your front yard, but the sky in your back yard is perfectly clear.

7. You begin finding ticks in February and March.

8. You are captured in conversation with an intense kindergartener who tells you more about running a hog operation than most adults could ever begin to imagine. And much more than you really wanted to know.

9. Your grandmother and your father both kept skunks as pets when they were kids.

10. Every morning when you open your eyes and look out the window, you are certain there is no more beautiful place on earth.

Mother's Day Gift

 


Yes. It is indeed a Jane Austin action figure. I am blessed with the best family ever.

Mothering

Everybody knows that a good mother gives her children a feeling of trust and stability. She is their earth. She is the one they can count on for the things that matter most of all. She is their food and their bed and the extra blanket when it grows cold in the night; she is their warmth and their health and their shelter; she is the one they want to be near when they cry. She is the only person in the whole world in a whole lifetime who can be these things to her children. There is no substitute for her. Somehow even her clothes feel different to her children's hands from anybody else's clothes. Only to touch her skirt or her sleeve makes a troubled child feel better.

---Katharine Butler Hathaway

I do not remember ever feeling this way about my mother. Her personality and mine were so distinctly different that I rarely, if ever, felt the blissful connection between mother and child that is so highly lauded in our society. She loved ruffles and ribbons and layers of lace; I abhorred scratchy, itchy, dresses. She was highly emotional and very expressive; I was highly reflective and extremely reserved. She dressed me in bright red as often as possible; I loved blues and greens. She seemed to live for church activities and get-togethers; I despised Vacation Bible School. She went to nearly every school activity in which I was ever involved; I craved my own space. In short, she was (and is) an extravert's extravert, and I am a dyed in the wool introvert. The things that to her were the epitome of comfort and joy were nothing short of trial and torment to me, and our relationship was considerably rocky for a long time because of it. There were other rather pronounced difficulties, oh yes. Still, even those were exacerbated by her natural affinity for living in the outer world and my rather plain-spoken distain for it, by my bone-deep need to dwell first in the depths of a quiet inner world and (what seemed to me) her oblivion and utter disregard for that at all. For years she kept battering away at the walls I'd purposely built to keep her at a "safe" distance, never really seeming to understand that her efforts only necessitated thicker walls. For years I battled anger, bitterness and, yes, hatred--of her and myself both--as well as guilt that she would never be the mother I was sure I'd needed, and I could never be the daughter she wanted.

I forswore motherhood altogether by the time I was eleven or twelve and felt no small relief in doing so. Already by then I was investing much of my identity in my thought life and academic achievements and interests. No children would mean more time to read, more time to devote to writing. Also, already struggling with depression, I reasoned my decision would spare whatever children I might have had, from life itself, which I considered to be very little short of misery incarnate. My mind was made up. My life would be my own, and I would not use it to create and be part of the tearing apart of someone else's.

Then I met Great Scott, and somehow, I ended up with two daughters who think I am the be-all, end-all of motherhood, an unlikely and unlooked-for grace, for certain.

Our twelve year-old gave me a hand written card this morning thanking me for being there for her "in troubled times" (she's beginning to hit the high hormone stage, and we spent some time drying tears after bedtime last night), and our newly nine year-old's card expressed her hope to someday "be like" me (a thought that causes sheer terror to rise in my throat, I assure you). I know that adolescence may bring more troubled times. Already the mothers of my older daughter's friends compare notes about difficult attitudes and increasing relational struggles. I'm bracing myself, but so far I'm nothing but touched and humbled by our girl's (by both our girls') love and regard, a love and regard for and in a relationship with which I've had no former experience and which, in truth, I could never deserve.

And my relationship with my own mother now? Improved. No bitterness; no hatred. I learned to express and enforce some of the boundaries I need in ways that acknowledge her good intentions and affirm her for them while still holding my ground. She began to recognize that my need for space isn't an indication of rejection, and assured of this, she seems to have less need to push. That's been a good starting point. It's made all the difference. We laugh now about things that would have been cause for dissension in the past: "When I'm old," she told my sister a couple of years ago, "I'm coming to live with you. Cindy would make me behave!" It's one of my favorite stories.

Procrastination Aids: Ok! Ok! You told me so!

My brother-in-law and his very significant other have told me for nearly a year now that I remind them of Elizabeth Bennett, especially as she is portrayed in the A&E production of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. Today my dear pseudo-sister-in-law sent me a quizzlet. Guess what. :)

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

You are Eliza Bennett from Pride and Prejudice! Yay, you! Perhaps the brightest and best character in all of English literature, you are intelligent, lively, lovely-- in short, you are the best of company. Your only foibles are that you stick with your first impressions... and your family is quite intolerable.
Take this quiz!

Procrastination Aids: If You Were a Writer in the Fall...

I swear I was going for fantasy novelist!

You Should Be A Poet

You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

And then there's this, uplifting thing that it is:

You Are Changing Leaves

Pretty, but soon dead.

What Part of Fall Are You?

Friday Quote: On Useful Pets

The Tiger

The Tiger on the other hand,
is kittenish and mild,
He makes a pretty playfellow for any little child;
And mothers of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.

--Hilaire Belloc
Cautionary Verses

Worm

I recant. I don't hate people, and I feel like an invertebrate for having said so. What I need isn't a tirade, as satisfactory as that might sound. What I really need is to think about the day's good points. Here goes.

:::deep breath:::

1. The younger daughter after school this afternoon using her little stuffed eagle (school mascot) and her goldfish crackers to give us an impromptu demonstration at the table of what DDT does to the wildlife in an ecosystem. (I will never look at goldfish crackers the same way again.)

2. The older daughter buying her little sister a secret Easter gift with her own money.

3. Errand running with Grandma.

4. The sky at sunset as I sat on the glider and watched the colors change and the light soften.

5. The trilling of one of the creek frogs and the sweet chirping of the peepers (little tree frogs) as dusk deepened.

6. The more frequent desire to write, and the slowly widening freedom to dabble in fiction for the first time in almost twenty years.

7. A 10-15 minute conversation with a couple I'd just met--total strangers--in the hairspray aisle at Stuff-Mart. They are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this year, something that means more to me more than I can say. (Yes, I told them so and thanked them.)

8. The patient, hard-working, kind and faintly warped husband sleeping in the next room.

9. The light that spilled through the eastern windows in the bedroom this morning.

10. The God whose grace astounds and totally befuddles me.

Overload

I.

Hate.

People.

(Note: If you are reading this, I will consider temporarily suspending you from membership in the human race so long as you do not call or show up on my doorstep for three days.)

Procrastination Aids: Zodiac

This little quizzlet is supposed to reveal which zodiac sign you should have been born under. Sometimes it's nice to know I've done something right. I was amused at the accuracy of the description, especially the first four points. The fifth is applicable on the last job only--I am decisively anti-athletic. The sixth is true, but only in the same sense as would be true for a train wreck, I'm afraid. The seventh...maybe; I wonder if black pepper and dill pickle potato chips apply, here.

You Should Be An Aquarius

What's good about you: philosophical and idealistic, you are a great thinker What's bad about you: you require a lot of space - it's hard to get close to you In love: you're quirky and playful, but you hate to be smothered In friendship, you're: likely to have many acquaintances and very few good friends Your ideal job: pilot, snow boarder, or science fiction writer Your sense of fashion: unconventional, unique outfits that turn heads You like to pig out on: anything with garlic or unique spices

What Sign Should You Be?

Friday Quote: On What Children Value

"Children are the true connoisseurs. What's precious to them has no price, only value."

--Bel Kaufman

A. Panda

This is the most important member of our family. She doesn't pick up after herself. She doesn't help with any other chores. She doesn't bring in an income or run errands or go to school. Be not deceived, however. A. Panda is entirely indispensible. She eats meals at the table. She plays outside with the girls. She goes to church. She goes to Grandma's house. She goes shopping. She oversees baths. She is present at nightly story times. She sleeps in the bed with our younger daughter every single night. Life cannot go on without her.

Wednesday we lost A. Panda somewhere between the schoolhouse and the girls' room upon arrival home. We ransaked the car. We traced our paths from the car, across the yard, into the house and in every single room wherein the younger daughter had set her foot since entry. A. was nowhere to be found. In desperation, I called the local convenience store back in town where we'd stopped for Icees after school. The girl working the front counter walked through the store and even looked out in the parking lot. She was very sympathetic, but she found no panda.

Eventually we did find A. Panda. She was upstairs in the girls' room sitting on a shelf. Well, no wonder we couldn't find her! The younger daughter had put her up! There was, I assure you, much rejoicing. Especially as Mama was just heading for her car keys to drive 15 miles back into town and scour the streets and parking lots for her.

Later that afternoon we found something else that added to our pandaic celebrations: the Panda Cam at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

We share our joy.

(Note: The Naked Mole Rat Cam is pretty interesting, too, although perhaps a large part of the attraction is the shock on people's faces when you tell them what you've been watching on the internet.)

Friday Quote: On the Past and Future

"The stories that you tell about your past shape your future."

--Eric Ransdell

The Meeting: The Blogosphere Converges on Real Life

Wednesday was difficult. Teri from Bo of the Bales, Jennifer of Wonderfully Ill Composed and I had agreed to meet at a used bookstore in a town we were all going to be near this week. Jennifer was once one of Great Scott’s students, and we’re familiar enough for me to be totally relaxed around her, but Teri I had never met in person before. It’s difficult meeting new people. You want to make a good impression on them. You want them to make a good impression on you. You want everyone to be peachy-keen and cozy right from the start. You are an INFP harmony seeker of the very worst sort. You set yourself up.

The couple of hours the three of us spent browsing a used bookstore and over lunch were pleasant. We talked about Jennifer’s upcoming trip to London, Teri’s kids, our literary tastes and distastes and tried happily without success for the most part, to find people we might know in common, growing up as we all have within the same general area. Jennifer seemed pretty much at ease, and Teri was bright and encouraging, an excellent conversationalist. I, on the other hand, couldn’t string four words together without my thoughts either getting muddled or losing the order in which I’d intended them to come out. I wasn’t feeling shy. I wasn’t even particularly nervous or antsy. The words just jammed if someone asked me a question. It wasn’t a new phenomenon, and although I apologized to Teri and blamed it on introversion’s need to process internally before speaking into the external world, I realized later more than that was going on. It had happened that morning while visiting with my grandmother. It happened later that afternoon when Jennifer and I ran by Great Scott’s classroom to take him chocolate. My brain was simply shorting out.

This happens occasionally, especially when seasonal mood swings set in. Low-level depression saps mental energy even more than physical, and the brain becomes easily muddled. I begin needing lists to go to the store. Lists for two items. Lists for one item. Lists for one item that I have to concentrate to remember in order to write it down. Plural: lists (I’ll lose just one), lists I triple check at the store and sometimes still don’t manage to bring home everything (both things). In this mode it takes me forever to cook a meal, because I forget what I’m fixing or how to fix it. It is not unusual for me to find myself standing bewildered in the middle of the kitchen holding an onion on one hand and a can opener in the other with no idea of how to open the onion or what to do with it once it’s open. This is what happened Wednesday. Trust befuddlement to strike at the same time as the ridiculous urge to make a good impression.

“It’s ok, Hon,” Scott comforted me when I told him about my awkwardness and Teri’s very sincere and very obvious patience and kindness. “Jennifer understands, and Teri probably just thinks you’re a socially inept genius. People think that about your dad all the time.” I overlooked the potential, playful insult to my relational skills and decided to take the double compliment instead: a genius and like my father. Being compared to Dad is a consolation any day, and Scott had been far too sweet in his delivery to be baiting me. Besides, I really had no energy for a comeback.

I went to bed early that night, then sat up after all, reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, a book I’d long coveted and had found that day in the bookstore. Probably not the best choice of reading material given my condition, but it was helpful in a way, reestablishing for me the fact that the fogginess and dimming of the inner countries come and go without apparent rhyme or reason for some of us, and that when they do, what matters isn’t that one stumbled one’s way through a social situation with all the grace of an intoxicated elephant. What matters, indeed, is one’s willingness to continue stumbling and the grace and kindness with which those stumbles are received.

So, Teri and Jennifer, I thank you for Wednesday’s grace: your good company, your forbearance, your wit and your brightness. I’m grateful, and I'm chalking that grace up in my gifts and blessings column instead of lumping my own bumblings into the failures column. Lunch and the bookstore browse were fun. You are both most wonderfully enjoyable companions, and I gladly join Jane Kenyon in her oft repeated assertion of appreciation, “What clever friends I have. What clever friends I have!”*


[*Kenyon’s quote from Alice Mattison’s essay, “Let it Grow in the Dark Like a Mushroom” as published in the book Bright Unequivocal Eye: Poems, Papers and Remembrances from the First Jane Kenyon Conference, edited by Bert G. Hornback.]

Worth Reading: Frankenwasher: the Poem

Occasionally you run into something on the Web that tickles your fancy. I am a very serious person in real life. This is why I post so much frivolity on this blog; it's an attempt to lighten up, to remind myself that life is also fraught with the absurd. Poetry, like life, can be a pretty serious business, and poets are renown for being deep and philosophically moody. This is why, when I run across a poem that makes me laugh out loud for sheer, gleeful pleasure, I appreciate it doubly. And the fact that I'm married to the author? I'd say that just confirms my good taste.

Go read Frankenwasher: Prometheus was All Wet.

Friday Quote: On What Determines Who We Really Are

"It is not our abilities that show who we really are. It is our choices."

--from the character Adolphus Dumbledore
in the movie "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"

Instead of Blogging: Things I've Done in the Past Nine Days

1. Worked the school book fair.
2. Visited and run errands with my grandmother.
3. Parent-Teacher conferences.
4. Taxes.
5. Paid monthly bills.
6. Packaged up Jif Extra Crunchy to send across the pond.
7. More pen and paper journaling than usual.
8. Drafted two new poems...or maybe three.
9. Taken the girls to the library.
10. Spent a slow weekend watching movies with Scott and the girls. (Note: I have lived the movie "Junebug", although not so much in regard to Great Scott's family.)
11. Cleaned strawberry vomit out of pale beige carpeting at 3:00 a.m.
12. Watched an amaryllis open into a flourish of deep red trumpets in my windowsill.
13. Obsessed over fountain pens.
14. Spent a day with the girls in Springfield for dental visits, spring shoe shopping and a trip to Borders.
15. Had a long overdue visit with a friend.
16. Laughed with my brother on the phone.
17. Battled a false self.
18. Made pound cake from scratch.
19. Cleaned fallen branches and twigs out of the yard.
20. Stayed functional, if not optimal.

Tornados

Last night and into the early hours of this morning the National Weather Service had 56 reports of tornados in the Ozarks with more across the midwest. Scott and I sat up until the first line of storms was past. Then we fell asleep in the living room, leaving the television on, vivid radar colors splashing across the screen, to wait for the second line. The girls, who usually sleep upstairs were snugged cozily into our bed, and my closet had been cleared out and a radio and some batteries and blankets tucked into the corners, just in case. Somewhere around 1:00-1:30 a.m. I woke up to find Scott had retired to the girls' bed and the second line of storms was upon us.

Our internet connection is dial-up, and we'd be stupid to leave our computers plugged into either electrical outlets or phone lines during a Missouri thunderstorm, especially after having lost two modems and a monitor that way. So there was no live blogging the storms that shook the house and pelted the windows with tiny hail. I did, however, journal parts of the evening, and at the risk of exposing my unedited thoughts, will share.

[approximately 9:30 p.m. Sunday]
Presently I'm lying on the couch watching the news. Evidently last night several tornados went through Missouri, one of them in Vanzant, another in Branson. Currently they're tracking three more. It isn't storming here, although the wind speaks to the fact that somewhere not too far away, it is. On the map, a N->S line of storms is advancing on Springfield from the west, a line with tornado(s) very possibly and likely within it. Welcome to spring in Missouri.

[Scribbled near-absentminded notes while we watched the storm line press its way into Springfield]
When the winds begin
tearing at the roof and flinging
limbs against the walls--hear
them creak and pop with the changing
pressure--When the rain chills and hardens, tries
to break inside, smashes
holes in siding, crashes through the picture
windows, wrenching curtains from their rods, stripping
finish from the sills. When the roar
surrounds your body, solidifies the air
within your lungs,
When the storm comes, find
the lowest point, descend,
go to the center...

[approximately 10:10-20 p.m. (?)]
Listening to Springfield's KY3's live news. When they brought in hail the size of a half dollar, the studio was fairly quiet. Now you can hear the hail on the station roof like gangbusters, the weathermen are practically yelling, and the hail they're showing is the size of something between golf and tennis balls...Now bigger than tennis balls...And now it's quiet. It's quiet because it's headed across Webster County for us. Sitting on the couch, I can see out the living room's double windows to the west and SEE it [the storm] coming. The radar close-ups look to me as though the storm IS lessening overall, although the hotspots are still very pronounced.

11:19 p.m.
Fast approaching. I've cleaned out my closet and put one of the CD/radio thingies in there with a set of headphones and a bunch of batteries. Scott brought the girls down, and they're sleeping in our bed right now.

Rain. Only a bit. And some wind. According to the news guys on channel 10, it should be at Duncan up the road right now. 2 minutes [away]. Personally, judging by what's going on outside, I don't think it will be too bad here, save for the wind, and that not even too bad, I think. It seems to have moved north and gotten smaller, resulting in it skimming Hwy 38, for the most part...

11:38 p.m.
Scott is lying on the couch trying to sleep. I'll nap on the recliner tonight. There is another line of storms coming through that is currently east of Joplin. They're not as bad, judging from the radar, as this one was, but they're stronger than they were at first, so we're going to leave the girls in our bed for the night, just in case...although... I COULD go upstairs and sleep in THEIR bed.

11:45 p.m.
The [first] storm that went over us is passing 'Grove [Grovespring], where it apparently picked up strength if not size of area covered.

Picture [on the news] of the hail that fell in Springfield just now. 45 minutes ago, and the thing is pretty much softball or grapefruit size. I need to turn out the light and nap. (We're leaving the TV on, albeit w/ the sound turned off. This is why I can tell you that there are great big trees down across National Avenue [in Springfield].

Sleep, Cindy. Go to sleep. While you can, Lady.

Monday, March 13, 2006
6:18 a.m.
[The girls' school] is closed due to storm damage.

What happened between telling myself to go to sleep and the school closing report is that Great Scott beat me to the girls' bed, and I woke up, as I've said, with the second line of storms directly over the county line. Directly over us. I wouldn't have had time to wake Scott up and get the girls into the closet before the tornado would have been on us, if it had come through our field. As it was, it or something very like a tornado destroyed a home of some people we know just a few miles away and damaged some other friends' houses. Six homes were destroyed near Competition and Grovespring--little communities to the near northeast whose children attend school with ours. And in Marshfield, the town just to the west, 40 homes were destroyed in a subdivision.

...And I'd intended to blog about office supply stores today.

Updates:
1. Jennifer blogs about tornado weather in Columbia, Missouri this weekend here and here.
2. My mother reports that one of their customers lost their house as well.
3. The Amish community near us (see "Duncan" and "2 minutes away" above) is rumored to have been hit badly.