So, in a month I'll be done with residency, gone from Cleveland, moving on. I'm happy about this. But there are an awful lot of things I need to get accomplished and arranged before then, and that's what I'm trying not to freak out about. I need to find a house to move into. I need to arrange for movers to come get my stuff and bring it to that house. Before moving, I need to have a bag packed and ready to go for the family reunion, because I'll leave to go to that a very short time after moving. I also need to have all equipment planned and purchased for my upcoming trip to Greece. I need to have pet sitters arranged before leaving to go to the family reunion. That's the major stuff. But I also need to make it to the gym relatively frequently, to try to regain some level of fitness prior to hiking in Greece. And go tanning, to get a base tan to avoid getting another horribly bad burn at Bear Lake. And do some pre-move de-cluttering. And probably some other stuff I'm not remembering right now.
Deep breath.
Anyway, I have some irreverent thoughts about tornadoes. Too soon? Hopefully not.
My thoughts on tornadoes are heavily influenced by spending my formative years in Xenia, OH, a town in southeastern Ohio which is still famous (not kidding, a random Clevelander younger than myself had heard of Xenia for this reason) for getting smeared by a particularly large tornado in the 70's. And then another one a few years after we moved. So we had a lot of tornado drills at school. They were taken very seriously. It was really more a matter of when a tornado was coming for you, rather than if. The high school had been demolished by the big tornado, though the field house (an incredibly solid concrete bunker-style building) remained; it was still in use as the gym for the junior high that got built on that spot. I was told a story by my fourth grade teacher about kids going into the cellar of their older house to hide from a tornado (because that's what you do), and the pipes broke and they couldn't get out and they drowned. We lived in an older house with a super-creepy cellar; for a few years I was convinced that if a tornado came we would die, because no where was safe. (I don't think teachers always realize the impact of these little stories they share) Anyway. With the recent tornado activity, I was not surprised to hear that schools had been hit, because, based on my experience, that's what tornadoes do; they seek out schools and demolish them. And then they head for all the older houses on the off-chance that they can make the pipes break.
I went for a walk in the park today, came to a meadow that had four or five deer eating grass. I stood and watched for awhile, and more deer came and went. At one point there were seven of them, and after a bit they wandered closer to where I was at to switch up their diet with some tree leaves. I read an article not too long ago which said that northeastern Ohio is seriously over-populated in the deer category, which isn't hard to believe. They frequently wander through my back yard, and I came home from work the other day to see a tiny baby deer hanging out in the back flower bed. Its mama eventually came back for it and they went wandering off; it was like she just stashed her baby in an obliging flower bed while she went to run errands.
The part of me that is not freaking out is super-excited to be moving on, and there's not really a whole lot about Cleveland that I'm going to miss. Its been OK, but only as a place not to stay.
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