Tired...

About five o'clock, or so, I turned on the radio, because the radar on the National Weather Service's site looked...chancy.  I heard what I was dreading/waiting for about an hour and fifteen minutes later: we were under warning to get under shelter.  The sirens hadn't gone off yet, so I shooed the kids into the bathroom, then grabbed each of the cats in turn and tossed them in, then went to get the dog (since she's right next to the back door).  I was back in the hallway, three steps from the door, when the siren went off. 

So...we were under a tornado warning from about six thirty to seven fifteen.  I had a clausterphobic four year old boy, a hyperactive two year old girl, two nosy and hyperactive cats, and a curious dog that would have liked to get hyperactive and chase the cats and kids around a six by twelve room still packed with kitchen stuff a few times. 

I wound up spending forty-five minutes sitting on the floor, listening to the radio coverage of the storm system, watching the radar, yelling at the kids to be still, and hanging onto the dog's harness, keeping her mashed under my elbow.  And as soon as we got out from under that, I took the dog out, and found out why she was so insistent that she needed to get out from under my elbow: she spent maybe three full minutes squatted in the rain, peeing and pooping. 

Yeah...the kids have maybe ten more minutes before they're going to bed.  And after that, I'm going to write a bit, then head for bed as soon as Odysseus gets home from work, sometime between ten thirty and eleven.