[ja]cobdavis

Yesterday evening I was riding down the lake front listening to NPR. They had said that in the early morning hours of what is now today a huge storm like no other is going to hit Chicago. Now, once you’ve lived in the midwest for the entirety of your life, and have watched as funnel clouds float above your house and rain come pouring down from the sky as if from an overturned bathtub, you kind of get used to awful storms. I even moved to the grand ol’ open farmland of middle Illinois, where weather and wind didn’t have buildings go bunch up against. So when the news had said the storm was, in a way, going to knock down my door tie me up, murder my family, and force me to watch while it rips apart my brick apartment building it make me second guess my sanity on riding to work the next morning. I even sent a text to my boss saying that I wasn’t going to come into the store to work because of the explosiveness of the storm, and my worry for my safety when riding. The morning comes and the sky is angry, churning. A low buzzing plane and the trees rocking back and forth made me worry even worse. I ran to get doughnuts and came back to hunker down. Then the rain came, it was sort of pathetic at first and wasn’t much of a storm. I huffed and took a soak. After about half an hour I stood out of the tub and heard the rush of water against our south facing window. I dried off and look a look. Yup, it was raining. Pretty hard sure, but 70 years rain? Definitely not.

Quite the dud. They had even said the wind was going to steal babies from their cribs and drown puppies by forcing all the tears out and back down their throats. Sure, it’s windy, but I’m not going to go and worry that a political sign might come unearthed and sent forthwith through my window, breaking all my collectable porcelain dolls. Maybe farther north it’s worse. But this storm, and more accurately ‘change in barometric pressure’ is a real let down, lack-luster at best.