Four inches

That's how much rain we've gotten in the past 24 hours.

Last night I went to bed around 10:30. Two hours later I was awakened by hail hitting my window. Typically storms don't bother me, and I just sleep right on through them. But last night it kept me in a state of just barely awake for quite some time. And then the electricity couldn't make up it's mind for a bit. So everything in the house went wwhHIIiir...whHIIiirr...whHIIirr...and then it was just off. I decided I needed to set my cell phone alarm so I could wake up this morning, so I got up to do that. About the time I got that done and laid back down, I realized how quiet it is when there is no electricity. So I tried to sleep in the silence and lightening. Maybe dozed off, not really sure.

Then the sirens started going off. I have lived in Claremore almost four years. In that time, I remember hearing the sirens go off two times: once last night and once a couple weeks ago. At this point it was about 1:30. I grabbed my stuff and headed to the bathroom. It's just weird sitting in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Makes you wish you had very thoroughly cleaned it very recently. After the sirens quit (like, one minute later) I called Amy to see if they were OK (and, if I'm being really honest, to hear another person's voice). She had her mom in Chelsea watching the weather and they said, "Uh, we don't know why Claremore's sirens are going off; there is no rotation. But there is flooding." Sirens are tricky. They either mean, "hit the deck the tornado is on top of you," or "hey, everybody, get out of bed because it's raining." They also mean, "great storm, come outside and see."

I would have been fine and just slept through the rest of the night, except for one thing. Amy said there was another storm headed our way with 80 mph winds. That's crazy. So I laid in bed for a while trying to decide what to do. As I was laying there hearing the silence, I also heard a weird dripping noise that turned out to be water coming in my front window. Got towels for that, went back to bed. Heard the storm pick back up, hail hitting my windows again. All I could think about was what if my windows break, what if my windows break, what if my windows break. Why, oh why, don't I have renter's insurance? I wonder how much it would be to add? Lord, put angels in front of my windows. I laid there worrying about it and finally realized that if I was going to be awake, I might as well have some feeling of security (as in, the glass won't hit my face if my windows break). Back to the bathroom. Still weird.

Finally at 2:45 I got to sleep in my bed. 4:45 the electricity came back on. 6:20 time to get up. 7:00 (seconds after I finished drying my hair) electricity went back off.

By the way, my windows didn't break.