"We're not in Tennessee anymore..." |
Last week my sister, my cousin and I decided to slip down south to catch some sun in Gulf Shores, Alabama. More specifically, last Wednesday, the 27th of April 2011, we decided to journey from one end of Alabama to the other. Unbeknownst to us, Alabama was on the verge of looking like this:
Red is bad. |
What's a blog entry without some microsoft paint action? |
For whatever reason, this did not deter us and we continued to push on. I fully understand that many of you are thinking that we're idiots and you have my permission to mutter "idiots" or "morons" under your breath as you read this.
More rain, more dark clouds, more weather channel on the radio. As we entered Cullman County, the weather station announced that Cullman County was in the clear for the night, that Cullman could rest easy for the night. We sighed a big sigh of relief and were happy to be in Cullman.
You know the common joke that weather men have the only job where they're allowed to be wrong half the time and still get to keep their jobs? So not funny any more. The man announcing our good news of tornado free skies quickly changed his mind from ''sleep well'' to ''a tornado has landed in Cullman County. If you're in Cullman County, you have minutes to find shelter''. Seriously. This happened.
One of the many tornadoes that harmed Cullman County |
Thanks for the memories, Comfort Suites. |
Not to dog the Comfort Suite franchise, but I've paid less for hotel rooms in New York and Chicago. And those rooms had electricity. The whole scenario seemed like horror movie plot-and it's super scary wandering through the hotel with nothing more than your cell phone light or a oil lantern-which they had! And they were using them!
Way better than cable. |
The room could have double for a sauna so my cousin and I used the Philips head screw driver in her emergency road side assistance kit to dismantle the safety hardware on the windows, popped those suckers open and let in a cool breeze. Since every single restaurant, drive through and gas station was without electricity they were closed and we were without food.
Anthropomorphism is so funny. |
Like little raccoons thieving a camp site, we slipped into the kitchen that night and took a half gallon of Breyer's Rocky Road ice cream, mountain dew, yogurt and fruit loop cereal up to our room. We laid on that queen size bed eating contraband rocky road ice cream and fruit loop cereal, listening to the rain sing its victory outside and laughed about our current situation: critical care nurses who needed a break from their stressful jobs were trapped in a town that had no electricity in Cullman, Alabama, in an insanely hot hotel that had no electricity, feasting on sugar and in one of the more stressful situations one could find themselves in-not the vacation we envisioned.
Exhausted from dodging tornadoes, we giggled ourselves to sleep-not knowing the devastation that awaited us the next day. Devastation that would be revealed by the light of day.
Blessings,
KB
KB
P.S. Sufjan Steven's "Songs For Christmas" are lovely and never out of season.
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