Drama Queens

Yesterday, the storm was topic number one in CorpWorld. People were worried about their houses, their cars, their commutes back home. The storm was supposed to hit around 5pm and a coworker of mine planned to put their car in the corporate ramp and wait until things blew over before going home.

Other people went home early. I was one of them, so was E - she dashed home and began clearing out our garage so we could put at least one of our cars in shelter. I picked up the kids at warp speed, expecting the worst to arrive at any moment. I'm telling the boy what hail is and explaining that there might be something called a tornado that would make us have to go into the basement.

We get home and hit the garage. Baby E goes in a chair and the Boy joins us in moving the boxes and soon we have one car in the garage and the minivan snug up against the house. Then I go out and check the window wells and downspouts, E's got the weather channel on and we're looking at tornado watches for the half the state.

I notice that there are spatter marks on the side of the house above the window wells. Not good. So up the ladder I go to check the rain gutters -

Memo to homeowners out there - gutter guards delay, but do not prevent your gutters from clogging up. If your house is half under a tree, you will have problems.

So, I get the guards off and start flinging out gobs of soggy plant matter. The flooded gutter empties itself out, and I move on to the next gutter. Same story. Mud, rotten plant bits, and water. I do the third side of the house by standing, both feet, on the top of the ladder and reaching up to the gutter.

Wind's picking up, but still no rain.

I get onto the roof for the last, unreachable stretch of gutter, and discover wasp nests, lots of them. Having sunk up to my elbows in muck, I at first dive in - but common sense reasserts itself and I just take off the guards and take out targets of opportunity. There's some grist still in there, but I'm over it.

Inside, wash up - still no rain.

Local weather is telling us to prepare for the end. National weather is ignoring us in favor of talking about what this weather will do to the east coast AFTER it finishes with our irrelevant butts.

Tuck the kids in and wait.

-and nothing.
No high winds, a scant sprinkle of raid and no hail of any kind.

Oh, some areas across the state got hit, but our neck of the woods was zilched. I'm not sure the weather coverage hyped this too much, but it was definitely a case of group anxiety feeding off itself. "X is going home early, I will, too!" that kind of crap.

We have a car in the garage and the gutters are clean, so I guess it was good motivation to get off my butt - but, rgh! I hate doing the headless chicken thing...