"...a deadly storm could just sneak up on my home at any time..."

Our weather radio has been going ballistic for the last twenty-four hours or so. Peanut Butter has lost his shit at least a dozen times over it. Every time we get a flash flood, severe thunderstorm, or tornado warning for our area the radio shrieks and P.B. starts yelling, "I hate that fucking thing! Why do we need that thing? I'm going to throw it out!!!" and on and on and on.

I don't know what's worse though, having the weather radio screech at us multiple times a day or having my mother call and text multiple times a day to tell us what her weather radio is telling her, which is the same thing our weather radio is telling us, despite having told her on numerous occasions that we have our own weather radio - that we purchased on her insistence. (Could I have used the term 'weather radio' any more times in that monster of a run-on sentence?) My poor mother, I know she means well, but damn, redundancy irritates me to no end.

I don't even really hear the radio anymore.

I mean, I do, I let it go off for eight seconds before it switches over to the robotic voice that describes the warning we've been put under. I listen, then I go about my business, happy to know I at least have something that will give me a heads up if I need to take cover. It just doesn't bother me.

In all honesty, I wish we didn't need it, but this is the downfall of living in a rural area of Tornado Alley. We don't get tornado sirens on a mountain road. Being a Floridian who is used to getting several days notice of an upcoming hurricane, it's very hard for me to accept the fact that a deadly storm could just sneak up on my home at any time and destroy everything. The weather radio is my peace of mind.

Obviously, we're okay here in the Orchard house. I'm admittedly quite shaken up over the tornado that ripped through Joplin yesterday. I can't even begin to imagine the horror of living through such a powerful force of nature. Of course my thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been affected by that storm.