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THERE'S A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM headed your way! They said it would be there in twenty minutes. And there's a strong chance of a tornado, too! My daughter called today with this urgent message. She'd just heard the radio warning and we both agreed that a warning means it's a pretty sure thing. So I called the dog inside and I closed the kitchen window (yes, it was actually that warm outside!)

It was mid-afternoon and there hadn't been any indications of a storm brewing. But very soon the sky looked like this:


And then like this:


The clouds were low and roiling. And in another direction, the sky was a weird tornado-forecasting shade (according to my reading of it, which is colored by my apprehension, which is directly related to my age-eight-year-old viewing of The Wizard of Oz on t.v...


...Well, all the animals seemed uneasy, too, and they never saw any movies at all with special effects!)


I hung nervously around the basement door and thought about the plans I've had to re-arrange the living room furniture. Putting the sofa in a tree or a lamp up on the barn roof hadn't occurred to me before, and I can't say the idea was very appealing. For all I knew, though, the project might really get out of hand if things got moving at whirlwind speed!

Lightning streaked and thunder cracked and boomed and rumbled. Rain came in torrents.
Sirens sounded, not too far away.

But in the end, that tornado must have knocked on (down) someone else's door. And, fortunately, it looks as though I get to do my own (strictly interior) re-design.

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