Radar of doom

I do not have a crush on the weather guy. I swear.

But just because I consult the news obsessively through tornado season and refer to him by his first name, Hubby says I have a weather crush.

Dude. Seriously. I could do better.

Hubby just doesn't appreciate that every time the sky gets dark, my stomach starts tying itself in knots. That I haven't lived in the Midwest long enough to just look at the sky or the radar, go "eh," and continue my day. Sorry. I know plenty of born and bred corn-folk who feel the same way this city mouse does.

The last time I ranted about the weather was right before the massive tornado outbreak in the South, so I have to qualify: I get that we have been lucky. We have had two near misses in six years. But it's storms like the ones that just hit Alabama that strike an all-encompassing-gonna-wet-myself kinda fear in me. I limited how much news coverage I watched and read so I would still be able to sleep at night, but I heard enough to be scared. All the stories were heartbreaking. People were killed in their basements - they did everything right and still could not survive Mother Nature's wrath.

That's what scares the shit out of me.

So this time of year, I check for warnings at the first sign of a single gray cloud. I stay up until the 11 o'clock news so I can check that nothing is coming in the middle of the night. If I had control of the remote right now, we'd be watching local channels - no matter what crap show was on - until Rick says nothing is going to hit my house. But it's Cubs v. Cardinals, so I will have to settle for obsessively checking radar and Facebook (where I am a fan of the local station and get weather updates in the news feed) and listening to the thunder get closer.

And trying not to look nervous so Hubby will stop laughing at me.