Cooler Wednesday

The temperatures are starting to go down once again.  I guess by the weekend it may be cold rather than cool.  Woody has had a stay close to home kind of day...which is what the doctor ordered...resting his leg as much as possible.  I had a normal school day, except that Esther didn't read with me today because she and her mom took Georgia back to the vet to have her wounds checked.  The vet prescribed another stronger antibiotic since she still hasn't healed. Elijah had his long time.  Today he worked on electric circuits using the Snap Circuit sets that we have.  After school, I grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the library.  Donna, Fran, and I worked on a new book order so we will soon have a few more books in circulation.  I came home and plopped in a chair in the family room and Georgia joined me and slept on my lap for a little while.  She isn't the cuddliest of cats so I hated to disrupt her lap sitting time...good excuse to rest for a while! We have had supper and I cleaned up the kitchen.  I have a load of wash going as Joseph is wanting to put a machine embroidered design on a shirt and it needs to be washed and dried before we put the design on it.  He plans to do that during his time with me tomorrow instead of having Osmo time.  I need to get it ready tonight and have the threads chosen or we won't have time to get it done in the time that he is here.  I got a couple of books for Woody at the library and he has already started one.

Tonight's photo I took yesterday when the sun was shining on our little Tulip Poplar (TN's state tree).  This is taken down the side of our house between our house and Nathan's and into the back yard...so pretty with yellows and oranges right now.  The storm the night before last did blow down a lot of leaves and branches, but pretty leaves still remain.  The tornado sirens did go off for us which  means a "tornado warning" = tornado on the ground.  But it went off after the radar showed it was all clear for us...once this storm passed it was gone and wasn't going to have another to follow.  It went through quickly.  I'm pretty sure that the siren went off because there was a tornado sighted in our county...but not our part of the county.  There was a tornado that touched down and caused damage in a little town down the road from us in Decherd, TN.  And, there was one that touched down and caused a lot of damage including killing one 42-year-old lady and injured two or three others.  That tornado was very close to where our daughter lives.  So sad.  The people who were injured lived in a trailer that was flipped over several times.  But the lady who was killed lived in a large two-story house.  The roof collapsed in on her.  Two suggestions--always--that the weather folk tell their viewing audience:1. Go to the lower floor of your house to an inside room with no windows. 2. If you live in a trailer go to a safer place.  They had been repeating that over and over that night for a long time before the storm actually hit.  One of the problems with that storm was it came in the middle of the night...but we had all been warned from early in the week that we were going to have bad storms that night so this one didn't sneak up on anyone...but when it arrived, it did arrive quickly and left about as quickly.  I heard the rain hit the side of our house with quite a force.  I gathered up a folding chair and my iPad and cell phone and headed downstairs.  I hated to wake up Woody, but I knew that if it was necessary for him to get situated in our safe place--the downstairs bathroom--that it would take a few minutes to get in there.  When I got downstairs and woke him up, he turned on a Huntsville TV channel (we only get Alabama TV stations on our antenna) and I had a Nashville channel live streaming.  Huntsville was focused on the one close to us and the Nashville was focused on the one near Mealny and mentioned us every so often.  So we were covered with what was happening weather wise for us and all areas surrounding us.  We knew by the radar when the cold front got through and we were in the clear.  Woody went back to sleep and I went upstairs to try to go to sleep!  And, then the phone went off as did our warning siren...but we knew that all was clear and the siren went off pretty quickly.  So that was our exciting night the night before last! Today we have had a little rain off and on...no storms...thank goodness!