My storm story

Remember the line of horrible storms that ripped through 150 miles of America on Tuesday night?
I realize many are worse off than me, but here's what happened in my little corner of that disaster.
(Because you won't ever see it on the news)

I get home around 6:45 and the storm is nearly upon us. It's not raining yet, but I know it's about 20 minutes away. I turn on the tv to watch the news. Nathan's watching the radar on the computer.
but he comes in there with me, we watch for a few minutes and then decide the worst is north and south of us.
then the satellite signal goes out.
he starts looking for candles and fire and the lights go out.
then the dogs' collars start beeping and shocking them.
it's pitch black. clover is freaking out. he's trying to get her to come to him so he can take the collar off.
i found addie and tried to take hers off and the collar shocked me. nathan comes over and unscrews it.
beforehand, we decided we'd hunker in the hallway with all the doors closed, under a mattress if the tornado sirens went off.
i'm trying to close the hallway doors. nathan is still looking for fire.
but the dogs keep running into the office and i'm trying to get them out so i can close the door. i'm a bit frantic at this point because lightning is the only thing i can see by... but fortunately, there's plenty of it.
i get one dog out and lighting strikes and i see the other has run in. so it went on like this for a few minutes because i'm yelling and they're getting more scared and backing further into the room. so i finally said, "fine! die in there!" and walked away to help find fire. I was tempted to shut the door on them, but changed my mind.
i finally got fire and candles together in one spot, and nathan calmly got all of the dogs in the living room.
i lit a candle and we saw clover was cowering under the coffee table and wouldn't come out.
then, within about 20 minutes, the storm passed. Things were calm but we still had no electricity and no way of cooking dinner. so we got some grapes and cheese out of the fridge and had philosophical discussions for a few hours.
and then went to bed around 9 p.m.
the lights came back on sometime around 4 a.m.
and we woke up around 7, after about 10 hours of sleep.
it was kind of nice actually.

All the news that's fit to blog

I haven't posted in too long.
To start, here's a photo of Nathan at the Ozark tournament.
This was after much whisky/beer and, frankly, he didn't care if there was a camera pointed at him when I suggested silly things for him to do.
Here's my favorite pic.


And, in other rugby news, I've started a Flickr account to post all of the rugby game photos I've been taking.
If you want to see my handy work, visit www.flickr.com/littlerockrugby. Or click here.

Who needs coffee?

The other morning at 6 a.m. it was storming. Lighting, thunder and the rain was falling in sheets.
I woke up knowing Nathan's windows were down and suspecting mine might be.
Did I mention how much I love my new car?
I love this car so much that I'll hop out of bed at 6 a.m., grab my keys, run out into the pouring rain in my underwear and make sure the windows are up.
They were in case you were wondering. I dodged that bullet.
Oh, and while I was out there I rolled up Nathan's window, too.

And once you go through that, there's no going back to bed.
You are wide awake, my friend.
Wide. Awake.

Okay, it's been way too long since my last post

It's time for some more pictures!
Yay!


Here's a picture of our semi-completed deck. We still need to add the roofing on that section with the posts for roofing.


Here's one of the furniture we bought on sale at Lowe's. I like the umbrella. How about you?

The decking process

As many of you know, the Tucker residence is in the process of getting a new deck in the backyard. It's going to be fantastic. And, lucky for you, we've documented the process.
So, to start off, here's our backyard with the batter boards.


And here's a view from the porch of the stakes in the holes (all 27 of them) and Nathan in the process of mixing concrete to pour in there. (I believe it's his birthday in this picture, too... happy birthday!)


And Nathan did this part all by himself...


This is the second layer of joists.


Nathan and his dad worked all day Thursday in the very hot sun to get all of this done...


And here's a view from the back door. Isn't it gorgeous?! We both can't wait to buy deck furniture!

My pup's all grown up... sort of

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.
Here's some more pics of Clover. It seems like she's bigger every time I come home from work...

Here's a picture of Clover at her first rugby game.
Look how adorable she is.


And here she is about 3 months later....
I might be biased, but I think she's gotten cuter!

"Welcome to the road"

Yesterday, I was out doing the farmer's market thing.
It started to rain pretty hard, sheets of rain in places, on my way home.
The streets were slick, but I arrived home safely and had been in the house not two minutes, when Nathan and I heard this sickeningly loud thud outside. It was so loud it shook my house a bit. At first I thought a tree limb had fallen on the roof.
Then we looked outside.
A little honda had hit an SUV right in front of our house. (We know that blind curve is a doozy and people take it way too fast sometimes, and we've been told they used to end up in our front yard about once a month before the city fixed it, but it's still dangerous.)
Nathan went outside, but I was too scared at first. The last thing I wanted to see was something horrific that I would remember forever.
As it is, I will never forget the sound of the crash. There were no screeching tires... just the sound of a wrecking ball hitting a building and nothing else. Makes me shudder.
I saw my neighbor across the street was already outside on his phone making calls. He was in the road checking on every one.
So was Nathan (he was a first responder...) Then I realize he went outside without his shoes... so I took them out to him, because I didn't want him walking on glass.
Thankfully no one was maimed and there were no fountains of blood.
The honda had crossed the center line and they had hit each other's driver's side front corner.
The guy in the Honda had broken his leg. He was put on a stretcher and into an ambulance.
The woman and her daughter in the SUV were fine, just shaken up really badly. Both were crying. My neighbor's wife was hugging them, and saying it would be all right.
Both cars were damaged beyond repair.
I told my neighbor I was going to make some calls, but I saw he was already on it.
He said, "Yeah, once I heard that sound, I knew what it was and ran outside."
Then he looked right at me and Nathan and said, "Welcome to the road."

One bad little tugger

This video is funny because we've trained my other dogs not to tug like this, but she's still a puppy and doesn't know any better. Plus it's cute. But the other dogs reprimand her when she plays tug of war.
And at the end of this video, that's Addie barking at her as if to say, "Hey! If the human wants the toy let go of it!" And she drops it and runs.
It makes me giggle every time.

Down a Louisiana highway

Here are some photos taken on our trip to Ruston. Along Hwy. 167, they're expanding it in fascinating ways.
First there's this.

Nathan says the utility company didn't move the poles like they were supposed to, so highway guys just dug around them.

Let's take a closer look at that:

All you can say is wtf?!

Then there's the sad reality of the houses being torn down to make way for this new highway. There are half demolished, half lived in neighborhoods along the roadway that I couldn't look at without wondering who lived there and for how long and how much it probably hurts them to see their family homes turned into heaps of rubble.



This one I just liked.