Weathering the weather, whether we like it or not

Friday night, after driving home with Erin through a driving rainstorm, I was sitting at my computer when something that can only be described as a severe low-pressure event hit the house. It wasn’t like a wind blowing, it was like the air sucked away from the house. There was a crashing boom, the place shook in a creepy way, and the windows in Ferrett’s and my offices sucked open. I jumped up and back away from the glass, ready to head for the basement. Ferrett came in to ask if I’d felt that and the pressure in my ears made him sound like he was talking underwater.

This is not my first experience with isolated, pre-tornado weather events. One fall when my youngest was only a baby we were visiting my in-laws in Indiana when the most severe storm I had ever experienced whipped across the plains. We returned home from a shopping trip in rain like someone throwing buckets of water at the windshield. We pulled into the garage and I got the kids out of the car. I came into the house and stood looking out the big picture windows at the waves on the lake, when suddenly there was this eerie whine through the whole place. Not being from the Midwest, it took me a moment to realize that the house was depressurizing—tornado symptom. I grabbed the kids and ran for the basement, but it passed. Later that evening we heard that a tornado had touched down in the next lake over from the house.

The next morning we surveyed a 30-foot-wide swathe of destruction going past the southwest corner of the house. It was like a lawnmower from hell had bulled down one path, ripping out the big oaks across the street from Oprah’s, charging through the yard, taking out the trees by the dock, and crossing the lake where we could see open ground that had been tree-covered the previous morning.

At the cabin 500 yards away the leaves hadn’t even blown off the trees.

And so it was at our house Friday. We were frightened out of our chairs, but the empty garbage can next door wasn’t so much as rolled over.

And this morning Ferrett pointed out the pile of shingles that have torn from the roof.

I really don’t need roof repair added to my bills and my stress right now. I am barely holding on as it is. Driving to work this morning I felt ready to abandon everything, sell the house, move someplace small and cheap and nondescript, buy a little place, and live off my equity. There are tiny beachhouses in Oregon that are only $45,000. I could hide out, walk on the sand, live small, write. It’s never too hot and rarely terribly cold and I don’t need much. Really.

I don’t want to be the grownup.

Gee, why don't they like us?

US Hawks Set Sights on Iran, Syria as Baghdad Falls

Emboldened by the U.S. military's apparent quick rout of Iraqi forces, conservative hawks in America are setting their sights on regime change in Iran and Syria.


"It's time to bring down the other terror masters," Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote on Monday -- two days before U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad -- in a piece entitled "Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn."


"Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle," he added. "Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq (news - web sites)."

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And on and on.

It's not an invasion, it's a war. And we aren't reinstituting colonialism, we're liberating people.

Just keep telling yourself that.