Midwest Morning

Living somewhere with a real winter has made me much more appreciative of spring. Especially this year, after such a mild winter we had an early start to spring with warm weather in March. Looking at some picture comparisons, our crabapple tree in front flowered a full six weeks earlier this year than last.

Anyway, the downside to spring here (besides being a bit of a tease at times) is the storms. Now, I love a good, loud thunderstorm as much as the next person, especially when I don't have to leave the house. But tornadoes? Scare the shit out of me. I'm sure it's similar to how one feels when they haven't grown up in a place that experiences earthquakes (which I did) and then moves to a city near a fault line. Tornadoes specifically in our area are pretty rare, but last spring one afternoon the sirens went off. I didn't even know for sure that that was what they were, but being a dork I Googled what to do in a tornado, retrieved the kids from their naps (in their rooms on the top level of our house) and we hung out in the basement for awhile. I felt kind of silly, but it turned out that a tornado had actually touched down not far from here and caused some damage. Since then I've been a little paranoid about watching the weather alerts for any tornado watches in our area. This morning I was driving to uptown Minneapolis with Pacey when a pretty severe storm hit. The sky turned that sickly greenish color and there was near-continuous lightning for about 15 minutes. I found my paranoid self constantly scanning the horizon for any ominous looking clouds and wondering what, exactly, I would do if I saw a tornado. Guess I have some more Googling to do. I think anyone who grew up here is probably laughing uncontrollably at me right now.

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Before we headed to uptown, I stopped in for gas at a small gas station near Brighton's school. I pulled up to the pump and got out to swipe my card, but couldn't find a card reader. I headed into the small building adjacent to pay and discovered it was also a feed store. The guy in front of me in line ushered me ahead of him and I asked if I could prepay for pump #2. The cashier gave me a funny look and another older man jumped in, "You can just go ahead and get as much gas as you want and then come back in. In fact, let me go out and do it for you, you can just wait in here." I let him know that I had Pacey in the car waiting for him, so he insisted on coming out with me and pumping my gas while I sat in the car. He then took my card in for me and brought the receipt back out to sign. He was so nice and so friendly and the gas wasn't any more expensive than the Holiday down the street from me. I told him before I left that he could tell his brother (who apparently owns the store), that he earned him a repeat customer!

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And finally, the reason we were in uptown: Pacey got new glasses!

Super cool sporty orange glasses that automatically turn into sunglasses
when he goes outside

More studious School Glasses

School glasses are fun too

And because she is so (so, so, soooooo) jealous that Pacey gets glasses and she doesn't, I let Brighton try them on. Brighton of the Future Who Almost Certainly Has to Wear Glasses and Hates It, look how excited you once were about them...