Mrs Mom has been asking me for over a year now about obtaining a table and chair set for our tiny back yard and I've put up every excuse imaginable (“Can't afford it, we don't have the room, it's going to be an obstacle when I mow etc.”)

The expiration date on the excuses ran out when our local Aldi popped up with a table and chair set for under $200; Mrs Mom decided Now was the time and we had to have it.

We raced out to Aldi the day they went on sale and they weren't exactly flying off the shelves, partially I'm sure because of the price and also because the main box measured forty inches square and weighed almost 75 lbs. I had to borrow a wheeled cart from the back room of the store because there was no way this this was going to fit in their regular grocery cart; the employees reluctantly let me borrow it as if I was really going to load it up into my truck and drive off with it. We also loaded it up with an 9-ft umbrella, a 30-pound base for the umbrella, a battery-powered light that clamps around the pole on the umbrella and an extra chair and slowly wheeled it up to the register.

Our new purchase filled the back of the truck once I got it all loaded and when I drove it home I remembered that my two wheeled dolly was a couple of miles away in storage so I had to drag the heavy box into the backyard while praying I didn't damage anything inside. The next day I cut the huge box open with a Stanley knife and was relieved to find only a minimal amount of pieces and some fairly simple instructions for assembling it all. I managed to get it assembled in a short period of time, stood back and took a good look at our new purchase, and had to admit it made the back yard a little bit more home-like. A 38X38 inch table with a tempered glass top, a big umbrella to shade us from the Texas summer sun, and five chairs; all we needed now was some friends to join us as I dusted off the grill for a backyard feast.

Then the local weather forecasters predicted a “possibly severe weather outbreak” for the upcoming weekend, including the possibility of a hailstorm. Oh isn't that just wonderful; and here was our glass table sitting out waiting to be shattered. Meanwhile I had another minor dilemma to deal with; the large cardboard box this all came packaged in was laying around in an unsightly manner and needed to be disposed of. Then the light-bulb above my head went off.....

I got out a pen and a measuring tape and cut the table box into 38X38 squares with a two-inch slot to slide around the umbrella pole in the middle. I slid two of them over the top of the table and Voila! Now there were two heavy-gauge pieces of cardboard covering the table. Unless we got hit with a really extreme hailstorm with softball-sized hail, the cardboard even wet would absorb most of the impact from hailstones. I clipped four clothespins on the corners, weighed it down with a couple of dirt-filled planters to keep the wind from blowing it off the table and we were now ready for Mother Nature to do her worst. And the remainder of the box pieces fit easily into the trunk of my sedan where it found its way into some lucky dumpster pre-dawn on my way to work later that week. 

The weekend arrived and as happens so often here in Texas, the skies got dark, the wind howled and then we got a few large drops of rain and....not much more than that. We got rain and not the drought-breaking amount that we really need but at least I didn't wind up picking broken glass out of the grass in the back yard. The cardboard held up fine in the light rain and dried out just fine in the sun the next day. Eventually I'm going to locate a 38X38 slice of all-weather carpeting to replace the cardboard but I think even Mrs Mom was impressed with my improvisation with the residual cardboard packaging. Now we are ready to do some grilling and some entertaining in the backyard this summer. 

Yes, I am very impressed. First, with the fact that we can now dine outside (I love doing that!) but mostly because he's pretty in handy with these ideas, that use up things most people would just toss out.

Clamping them with the clothespins will help it from being blown away, unless of course the we get hit with an F3. Then, I'm just going to have to start advocating for a new table and chairs all over again.

In my 55 years like a lot of people here in the South I've learned to keep one eye on the sky in between March and June. Actually all year long since tornadoes can theoretically happen anytime but especially during the spring. The Weather Report becomes important for not only planning family outings but just knowing if and when it's safe to leave the safety and comfort of my house or removing my wheels from the covered carport.

I've seen it begin to rain suddenly and watched the streets and highways fill with rushing water so fast the roads resemble rivers.   

I've watched helplessly through a window as hailstones the size of grapefruit reduced my pickup truck to so much battered scrap metal.   

I've seen the skies turn a dark green and heard that sound like a freight train as funnel clouds made their way across town less than a mile from my humble home.  

And far more often I've watched the local weather forecaster predict the “possibility” of all of these things happening while I'm getting ready to go to work and then.... nothing happened .

I've had friends in California call me long distance wanting to know if I was “all right” after they saw stories on the news about a tornado battering some town 100 miles away from where I live, just as I've called them after seeing a story on the news about earthquakes on the West Coast. We've often asked each other “how you could stand living there” knowing that Any Day the Big One could strike. And I'm sure they shrugged it off just as I've done so many times in the past. There's only So Much one person can do about it and living in fear is no way to live. Que sera sera and all that.

So when Mrs Mom moved here from an island that has a crack down the middle of it from past earthquakes and whose roadways have signs pointing out tsunami escape routes I didn't really expect her to panic each and every time we had a storm roll through. But guess what?

Now mind you I realize the weather forecasters are in a bit of a conundrum about giving people adequate warning in the event that a really bad storm is imminent. If something happens and people get killed, armchair quarterbacks everywhere will say: “They should have warned everybody!” and if nothing happens they get accused of Crying Wolf and I'm as guilty of feeling that way as anyone.

While I don't live in say Kansas or Oklahoma who get battered with tornadoes on a regular basis they happen just often enough here where I live to the point I don't really take the weather warnings as seriously as perhaps I should. But every time they predict hail storms or the possibility of tornadoes, Mrs Mom is online begging me to come home from my job. “Make up an excuse; just come home” she texts me while my supervisor is glaring at me for being online instead of performing my job. On April 3rd of last year I was online telling her to “relax, the forecasters just love to go on TV and scare the heck out of everyone” while she was watching 18-wheeler trucks spiraling through the air in the next county live on local television. It's kind of hard to compromise simultaneously with a woman online who's scared out of her wits and a supervisor pointing to a large pile of neglected work at the same time.  

But because I love her, when the sky turns dark and threatening outside I make up an excuse, any excuse (“The toilet boiled over and she doesn't know how to turn off the water!”) and hope that my supervisor doesn't put two and two together someday and realize that I mysteriously have plumbing problems each and every time there is a ominous looking storm rolling in so I can rush home and be there to comfort her. And besides I like having my car under the safety of the carport instead of it being a sitting duck for hailstones in the parking lot where I work. Also you never know; we might just have that Big One and I would rather be with her if that happens than on the other side of town.  

In my defense, I'm a tough woman. I can handle a week or two of being stranded in a blizzard with no power, or tolerate -40 degree temperatures while taking the kids out trick or treating. I've driven through blinding snowstorms on mountain passes in the middle of the night, and even survived the maze of driving through Houston's city core during rush hour and lived to tell about it. But if a weatherman comes on my television set and starts telling me that tornadoes are a possibility then I take him at his word until I'm proven otherwise. I'd rather be safe than sorry, and because I'm not experienced enough in Southern disaster scenarios, I prefer to have Mr Mom by my side, even if he's shaking his head in disbelief at my frantic preparations for The Big One.

That said, I think I should just note here that a certain southern gentleman made a trip up to visit me during the summer while I was still up North. I took him to the sunrise, which was a morning ritual for me. It was August and the pre-dawn temperature was about 65. He practically turned blue, even while snuggled in his fleece hoodie. I wore a t-shirt and sandals.  Needless to say we had to make a trip to the local secondhand store to get him 2 heavy wool sweaters, which he wore to every sunrise after that underneath his jacket. 

It looked something like this:

Now I'm not ridiculing him in the least (sort of) but I am pointing out that we come from very different places, and if its okay for him to shiver in the Summer up North, its okay for me to fret in the Spring here in the South. Right?