Tornado Alley

I foolishly put off blogging on Wednesday because I was finishing a manuscript and all I could think about was said manuscript. Hopefully, I'll think of something to blog about by tomorrow, I hoped.

I think I hoped too hard. Tomorrow has come and with it, a majorly intense blog theme--high winds and tornadoes!

The sirens went off at 5 a.m. this morning just as we lost power. For the first time in our lives, we grabbed the kids and headed for the storm shelter we had dug under our garage floor about seven years ago. That is an almost unreal feeling, huddling together, listening to the winds howl just outside the garage door (which suddenly seemed very flimsy), feeling the kids shake, hearing the dog pant, and seeing nothing but pitch blackness.

Fortunately, we came out unscathed and the house is still standing, but in a direct line with our house, only a street away, three huge, 150 year old trees were ripped out of the ground and laid crosswise across the road and front lawns of our neighbors. They missed the houses, by inches, but still, they missed.

And these were, theoretically, only high winds. I have a feeling someone at the weather station missed a rotation, but who knows. I'm just glad we're all still standing.

I have experienced a tornado once before in my life--right behind my car as I was driving home. I wouldn't suggest trying this at home. I had just returned from Houston and had spent the better part of an hour in a holding pattern over Tulsa until the storm moved out. The landing was super bumpy, but okay. I hopped in my car to head home. Minutes from my house, the storm, which had abated, revved back up. Hail pummeled down. The sky was pitch black. And behind me I heard the sound of a jet engine. I have never been so scared in all of my life. I was right next to the river, where tornadoes like to strike in this area. I could barely see anything, the rain was falling so hard. By the time I got home, I was shaking. I think I know how Dorothy felt now.  

If you're looking for a little weather excitement, look no further. Oklahoma is the place to be. Me? I'd settle for calm and sunny right now. I've had about all the excitement I'd can handle for a while, but oh the story ideas!

Out on Good Behavior

The ivory tower is granting me a one day pass to go out and see the real world. The things good behavior will get you!

GLEE!

I'm being let out to speak at Oklahoma's school librarian conference, EncycloMedia. I'm excited. Thrilled. And a little nervous. Okay... a lot nervous. I'll be out with real people. I have to talk. I have to talk intelligently, in complete sentences, with no editing, about my middle grade novel, Dragon Wishes. I have to sound like I do this regularly. But all I've done for weeks now is sit in the ivory tower with my imaginary friends - and a few dead writers - and write. My social skills have sort of fallen by the wayside. Ask my kids. My husband. My dog, even.

Fortunately, should my skills waver, I'll be in amazing company and so hopefully no one will notice. I'm speaking with Eileen Cook, What Would Emma Do, Cynthea Liu, Paris Pan Takes the Dare, Jenny Meyerhoff, Third Grade Baby, and Suzanne Morgan Williams, Bull Rider.

We're followed the next day by P.J. Hoover, The Navel of the World, Jessica Anderson, Border Crossing, Barrie Summy, I So Don't Do Spooky, Donna St. Cyr, The Cheese Syndicate, and Zu Vincent, The Lucky Place.

Beforehand, we're being interviewed for a televised program that the Metropolitan Library of Oklahoma broadcasts throughout the state. Please, please, please let my hair cooperate so that I look like someone who actually styles her hair every once in a while, rather than pulling it back in a haphazard ponytail because dead writers and fictitious characters don't care what your hair looks like. And after that, there is a luncheon with librarians. Gulp. Can I carry on a coherent conversation for a whole hour? Or will I get that far off, I-have-an-idea look and start scribbling on my napkin? Librarians will understand if I do, right?

Maybe after all of that real world experience, I'll be ready to lock myself away in the ivory tower again, but I have a feeling, it'll be the other way around. I used to be a pretty social person, some time in the distant past...I think. Either way, I think that seeing, talking and interacting in a spontaneous way with real live people who don't need me to edit their dialogue could be, what's the word?

Oh wait, I know...FUN!

Sleeping with the...Scorpions?

I couldn't help but break with my regular, frenetic, MFA writing/studying routine to post about this. I was lying in bed the other night (reading frenetically, of course). Where the Red Fern Grows. A classic I've avoided because it suffers from the painful dead dog syndrome, actually two dead dogs. But, in the name of higher education, I'd decided to tackle it.

I was just getting to the good part where Billy catches his first coon. He races back to the farm to tell his family. He's screaming and jumping and hooting and hollering. He's so worked up, his mother thinks he's been bitten by a snake. She drops everything and runs to help him.

When she discovers it's not a snake bite at all but a captured raccoon, she threatens to give Billy a sound thrashing.

Pretty exciting stuff, right?

Now add to that that this story takes place in the back country of the Ozark mountains in northeastern Oklahoma, about an hour and a half from where I live. As close to home as it gets, really. Plus, it's nighttime. The kids are in bed. I'm alone. With the dog. And I'm reading about snakes. Yeessh.

Something tickles my arm. I reach over to brush it off, thinking my imagination is really getting the better of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something scurry off across my bed. I bolt upright. I look.

It's a scorpion.

"Holy Sh**!"

At least, I think that's what I said. I was busy rocketing out of my bed as far away from the scorpion as possible. Practically hyperventilating, I dash to the phone and call my dad. Yes, I'm five again, tops, and hoping my father can fix it all. His advice: Kill it.

Gulp. I have to kill a scorpion. In. My. Bed.

Sorry, Wilson Rawls, but now Where the Red Fern Grows not only suffers from the dead dog syndrome but also the dead scorpion one too. After I'd beaten the scorpion very very flat, I called my husband and told him he had to come home right now.

When he finally got home and found me, a shell-shocked bundle of jumpy nerves huddled up under a blanket upstairs on the sofa as far away from my bed and any other scorpions that might be lurking, he had a hard time taking me seriously. In his defense, I must have been a comical sight, only I didn't feel a comical sight. I wanted sympathy. Indignation. Deadly, bug-killing chemicals.

But my husband is from Germany. They don't have scorpions. He doesn't get the whole, "They can hurt you" factor. To make matters worse, he is a Scorpio. He joked that I shouldn't have smashed one of his family members. Ugh.

Seeing as I was not going to get the needed overdose of understanding and sympathy from him, I called my girlfriend down the street, who hates bugs, ALL bugs. Okay, so maybe that was a little selfish, but I needed a lifeline! My friend really rose to the occasion. She listened. She was sympathetic. Indignant. Offered bug-killing chemicals. But in the end, there were two of us not sleeping that night.

Many many dollars later (I called the bug guy out to douse the house; so did my poor friend), it is safe to say, the only scorpio(n) I've slept with for many nights now is my husband...I hope.

The Demonator Returns

It happens about twice a year. And when it does, Katie bar the door. SNOW. Just watch how loudly you utter that devilish word here in Oklahoma. I've heard many a Sooner decry it as a four letter word. Okay, it does have four letters, but you get the point.

I don't share the agony many down here experience when it snows. I chalk it up to the fact that grew up in Indiana. Snow country. As kids, my brother and I lived for that glistening white magic. We were the meanest sledders in our whole backyard (not to mention Suicide Hill where we sledded with all the other crazy people when it snowed really hard). However, I did grow so daring one winter - we'd had a lot of snow - the regular sledding down the backyard hill got kind of boring. I decided to experiment. I think I was one of the first snowboarders. Mind you, it wasn't anything fancy. I just tried standing up on my sled and using the pull rope attached to the front for balance.

I flew down that hill. Screeching. Cheering my own ingenuity. I was on top of the world. Until I barreled into the bush at the bottom of the hill.

Yeah, I hadn't seen that one coming. I even slit open my forehead.

I was ten and my fury knew no boundaries. I swore to cut down the bush that night. But my mom made me come in for dinner instead.

As the days passed, though, the scar across my forehead became a badge of honor. I was the kid who'd sledded standing up...and lived to tell about it.

So you can imagine my chagrin when it began to look more and more like we wouldn't have any snow before Christmas this year. We've had a very dry winter so far. And then, last night, that blessed cold front came down from the north. We didn't quite get snow. It was 75 when the cold front pushed through, after all. But we did get ice. Enough to cancel schools.

But more importantly, enough for the Demonator.

I wish I'd come up with the name. I'm a writer after all. But I give full credit to my firstborn daughter and her best friend from across the street. They nicknamed our red Radio Flyer metal runner sled the Demonator two winters ago when, according to them, all on its own, it took them sailing down the hill out in front of our house, down the long street, and right up the driveway of the house at the bottom of the hill straight into the garden. Both girls were thrown clear of the sled when it crashed intothe brick walkway around the garden. No one was hurt. More, scared out of their snowsuits. So of course the incident immediately became legend.

The story gets better each year (I've heard it told that sparks were flying off the back of the sled when it hopped the curb and flew over the drive and into the garden). The sled, for its part, plays along. It it unpredictable, like a bucking bronco. Kids get thrown every year. Which means the line to ride it gets longer. And what started as a nickname is now a permanent title of honor and fear.

Which makes me more curious each year. I haven't tried the Demonator out alone. I've always been forced to take a kid along. But when I got up and saw the ice this morning, I wondered, how bad could it be? I mean, what would it be like to stand up on that puppy and sail down a hill? The kids are watching a movie and drinking hot chocolate after all...

Oh, Demonator.....