No…that’s not our house. It’s our next-door neighbor’s house. Thankfully.

So let’s back up a few hours. I went to bed last night, expecting to be woken up (for the second night in a row) by overnight storms. What I didn’t expect was to be woken up by our local tornado siren at 3:58 AM. Now here’s what gets me - the stupid thing didn’t sound anything like the siren I hear during the “testing” that takes place the first Wednesday of every month at noon. To be honest, it sounded like that humming noise you hear from live power lines…only really loud.

I didn’t hear any wind or thunder, and I didn’t see any lightning…so I opened up the back door to hear where the sound was coming from. It was coming from the back of the house…and about 1/4 mile down the street is where the siren is. I was 45% awake at this point, so I put two and two together…got 3.5…and then went to grab Cookie and my iPhone, and yell for Daisy to follow me into the Panic Room (aka, the guest bathroom). I got the dogs in there and then went for pillows and blankets and just as soon as I shut the door, the wind started.

Total time elapsed: 90 seconds

There’s nothing quite like sitting in your Panic Room with the world swirling around you outside…I’ve now experienced this twice in the 6 1/2 years we’ve lived in this house. The first time was last year. Ironically, CU has been gone both times. I’m beginning to think he knows something I don’t.

So we’re sitting in the bathroom and the first thing I think is I need to call CU, because I’m scared. But, I figured his Blackberry was turned off (found out this morning it wasn’t…oops) so I called Mom. I hated doing that because as we all know, it’s rarely good news when someone calls in the middle of the night…or really early in the morning. But, she kept me company and regaled me (for the eighty bazillionth time) with the story of when she pulled me (and all of my bedding) out of bed when I was just Weesnark in Wisconsin, and whisked me downstairs when a tornado siren went off. She totally scraped up her arm and was scared to death. Once I was down there, she sent my dad back upstairs to get her birth control pills. I love that part of the story.

The worst had passed by about 4:30, so I ventured back out into the living room to watch the storm coverage. Sure enough, some swirliness was detected in the atmosphere above Allen - which is what triggered the tornado warning. I managed to go back to sleep about 5:30, and woke up at 8 with a splitting headache.

After putting on some clothes, I headed outside to assess the damage and chit-chatted with the neighbors. Our roof looks good, and we only have one branch on one of our front trees that needs to be removed. It’s a rather large branch, but fortunately we already have a tree service so we get to move to the front of the pack.

A couple of the guys I work with weren’t as lucky…one can’t assess his roof damage because a large tree is covering it. Another had a lightning strike hit the ground right next to his house…and he insists his house is still humming.

I was about to say, “Never a dull moment around here”…but that’s not true. It’s always a dull moment around here, peppered with yearly excitement.