what a day!

yesterday at the end of my shift....almost 5pm...almosssssst 5pm, my husband calls. He is informing me of an AWFUL storm at home. (keeping in mind i do have the new roof up, and the pool redone, and the a/c unit replaced from the last storm....but not the inside ceilings where the water damage came in, nor the tahoe's 'hail-u-lite' pounded out.

i call the bosses...and meet them at the front, where we start to lay down mats in the vestibule (noticing our new brick floor has buckled up 2 feet!) just remodeled in Jan.

the sky goes from blue, to grey to black to solid midnight in about 10 minutes. (we've had the worst heat wave i can remember in weeks...for the last 5 days...each day triple digits in temp, and over 60% humidity. The most 'outside' i've been in the last 5, is from the house to the car....from the car to the store...and visa versa)

I'm not sure what NOAA called for us, but the town's warning sirens take off, and the cattle get nervous...Our job is to keep them off the bricks, away from the front doors... as we don't know what's coming...and the bricks get slick.

TIME TO CALL THE COWS!!

People are INSANE! The storm hits....and they start RUNNING outside..'MY WINDOWS ARE DOWN!!" (one woman that did that, was in a wheelchair, and could barely walk...she was hobbling as fast as she could)

We shut off the power, and close the doors as now we're looking at 80 m/p/h straight line winds, and quarter sized hail....and yes, the panicked cows continue to surge forward, to get a good look....and oh yes....TO CHECK THEIR CELL SIGNALS!!

The kicker was a young-trailor-trash lookin mommy, who had a cart of THREE BABIES!! I'm talkin' 6 months...18mos...and maybe 2yr old in her cart....'she just HAS to leave' ...and marches RIGHT OUT THERE with those babies. Did i mention 80 m/p/h winds???? MOOOOOO!!

The funniest was he-man....who puffed out his chest, fist on hips, and announces "I'm going out there"

As he steps out into the terror....a big ole bolt of lightning CRASHES right in front of the doors.....and her RUNS back in to the chuckles of the 100 or so shoppers who have gathered up there. (It was rumored that they gathered people to the middle of the store *tornado style* but i never heard that call) He man's pants were pretty wet....he blamed it on the rain.

Another customer who escaped during that same episode, said when she stuck her key into her door, she lit up...hair up, skin tingling...and she decided also at that time...it wasnt' really that necessary to get home right that minute, and returned to the store.

The dingy thing is....as we were tracking this storm (as we really DO try to keep an eye out for our herds) we KNEW that this was a fast, but devistating storm. We KNEW it would 'hit and run' and tried to calm the animals by telling this to them...."Folks, if you could just give it 5 or 10 minutes...it'll all be done, and really SAFE for you to leave." Evidently, we have a bunch of deaf cows.

To top it off, when i was closing the 'out' side of the doors (power off-lock down) One of the support team came up yelling about something....(voice three octives higher than normal) right in the midst of closing, i glanced up to see if was really him, or another siren)...and BANG slammed my thumb in the closing doors...the equivilant of slamming a car door on it. (*&*^&%$%*^)*%&$%$%&_(_*&&7...and i couldn't even cuss!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and now i'm minus one of my opposable thumbs.



MOOOOOO!