We had a relatively mild thunderstorm come through our area the other night.  I was sitting on my patio talking to a friend who had stopped to visit.  The storm and the situation reminded me of a particularly violent thunderstorm that I had experienced when I was just a young child.

I had a favorite stuffed bunny that I carried around with me every place I went.  It was a short-haired stuffed animal with a rubber face and you would have thought it was real, the way I carried it around.  I would even wrap it in a blanket like a live baby.

So, my brother and I are sitting in reclining lawn chairs on the big, screened-in front porch of my grandmother’s house, me holding my little bunny, wrapped tightly in a blanket. All of a sudden, there came a strike of lightning right across the road from the house and one very loud, booming crack of thunder.  It scared us so badly that we both jumped up, screamed and ran into the house. I, of course, dropped my little bunny and I remember I looked for that thing for at least two weeks and could not find it. I had given up hope and figured it was lost forever. Then, a couple of weeks later, as I was playing on the porch, I looked under the chair (for the umpteenth time) and there it was, where I had failed to see it before.  It was like a miracle to me and made me very happy indeed.

Every day I drive to my office downtown, park in a lot about 1/2 block away and proceed to walk, across two streets and to the front door.  On my way to the door, I pass several businesses, including a bakery, but I pass these businesses on the back side of the buildings as opposed to the front.

So, I was walking up the sidewalk, getting ready to cross the first of the two streets that I cross, when I see the strangest sight coming across the parking lot behind the bakery.  At first I could not tell exactly what it was, but as it came closer, I could make out a squirrel.  Now a squirrel is not an unusual sight during the springtime, but this one was, for it was carrying in it’s little jaws a large, chocolate cupcake, wrapped in plastic wrap.

It struck me as unusually humorous, since you seldom see a sight like this one.  The cupcake was almost larger than the carrier!!  He managed to get it across the street, and make his way carefully up a tree.  It started my day off with a smile.

Well, Dick Clark is gone and I am going to miss him.  I used to watch Bandstand back in the 70′s when I was a teenager.   This truly is the day the music died.  I believe that we, as a society, believed he would always be here.

His career spanned 5 decades!!!  That is absolutely amazing.  I used to love Bandstand and loved to watch reruns of it as well.  The reruns were a little hard to find, but occasionally, I would come across one.

After his stroke a few years ago, he was still doing cameo spots on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.  He was a trooper until the end.  I don’t think there will ever be another like him.

So, they are having more tornado outbreaks in the Midwest and southern plains.  I am so glad I don’t live there.  I have friends and family that live there and they have not yet been affected by these terrible storms.

I have a close friend whose family has been affected by the recent tornadoes in Iowa.  The town his son lives in was 75% wiped out this weekend by a killer storm.  People who he knew that had lived in their homes for 30 years or more lost everything.

Nature is a strange thing.  It can be so beautiful, peaceful and wonderful, then it turns around and becomes mean, violent and relentless.  I wish only the best to those who lost their homes.  But remember, things can be replaced, lives cannot.  No lives were lost where this friend’s relatives live, just belongings.  I know that you can’t ever get back the family pictures and memorabilia and that part hurts the most I guess.

That is all I seem to do these days.  I am beginning to think that is all I will ever do.

I get up at 5:00 a.m., get ready for work, spend all day running around, answering the phone, doing work at the computer and then I come home and have to do laundry, dishes, fix dinner or clean something.  I hate work!!!  I need a vacation and soon.

It wouldn’t be so bad I guess if my days weren’t so hectic at the office.  Some days I just want to crawl into bed when I get home.  Maybe I need to start taking vitamins; coffee just isn’t working anymore.