If you live in North Texas you know of the storms that raged through here Wednesday (May 2) evening.

Well imagine my shock and horror when I realized the storm was coming through as me and my boys were headed for The Ball Park in Arlington to watch the Rangers trounce the Yankees. Yep—we were about two blocks away (picking up the DH where he was leaving his car so we didn’t have to pay double parking) from the Ballpark when I heard on the radio that they were evacuating the seats we’d be in, due to the massive lightening strikes.

We were swept along in the ballpark traffic being led to the East side of the building. Dh and I debated letting me and the kids out at the light right by the third base gate and he go parking the car—as we are ever the optimists. About 30 seconds—I kid you not 30—later the skies opened up and a deluge fell.

We decided to skip the game and hightail it to his grandparents’ house about ten minutes away—it took an HOUR.

OMG! Repeat OMG! Two blocks, two measly blocks past the stadium and it rained so hard, so fast, the water reached near the car undercarriage. The battery light came on as we sat in well over a foot of water waiting to turn—I stayed calm. It was raining so hard I had to drive about twenty miles an hour with everyone else stupid enough not to pay better attention to the weather.

A MASSIVE burst of lightening exploded right in front of us, I screamed covered my eyes, for the barest of seconds and DH yelled at me to remain calm—did I mention I was the one driving? At the same time, all the lights on the street go black. And the rain worsens—if that is possible. All the while the radio folks are saying take cover NOW, don’t be outside—well NO SHIT, but looking at the 600 sq-ft mini-mart or older than dirt motel we were passing, I didn’t think stopping was really an option either.

At the turn we need to get to the GG’s (what we call the grandparents) house, I cut through the gas station parking lot. Not sure if this was a good idea, but there or the corner the fate would be the same, the front of the van hit a HUGE puddle, pond, hell I don’t know what you’d call it, it looked like a river to me, of water and the power steering went out—ever tried to steer a power steering vehicle without it—no fun. But that’s not even the worst. I couldn’t see past the front of the van (come to find out the winds were around 80 MPH they said for that moment) the rain had increase even more. I pulled into someone’s drive way—a shared driveway with four houses around it.

The DH made the kids get down on the floor of the van—two cried, one screaming “I don’t want to die.”—dramatics from my child—imagine! The van shook so hard that I kept expecting to be slammed into one of the four houses. Unfortunately there was a huge empty field behind us, so nothing to stop the wind. I finally couldn’t take it any more and turned around in the driveway—it was that big. And the rain had let up a fraction.

We made it to the next block where there were blessed houses to at least lessen it a bit. But in going down that street, we hit a half-downed powerline (don’t think we took it down the rest of the way, saw no sparks) and ran over two HUGE trees in the road—come to think of it, had we not stopped in that driveway—we wouldn’t have seen those at all and would have smacked straight into either or both—TOO FREAKING SCARY.

I ran several lights (when I was positive NO ONE was coming—didn’t want to sit in the water) and like I said, it was an hour for what normally took ten minutes max. We waited out the storm for over an hour—the second half in the dark as the GGs’ power went out.

The GGs were thrilled to see the boys. The boys got to eat chocolate ice cream with their great-grandparents and now have an exciting tale to tell.

On the way home, the power steering was back inline, however the brakes ever-so saturated, didn’t like it much—but we made it in one piece!

(Our house—with two poor doggies all alone—didn’t look like it had more than rain. Nothing seemed out of place and the pets didn’t potty on the floor, so I am guessing it wasn’t so bad here!)

Labels: life