Statue Theives

I was browsing the latest news stories today and came across a headline that just made me pause and really start to question it. The headline of this story was: "600-pound bronze moose among Calif. statue thefts". This headline really had a bunch of questions firing off in my head. To sum this story up, the police in California are looking for these art theives that have stolen at least 18 metal, wood and concrete statues, including a 600-pound bronze moose. The theives have stolen nearly $44,000 worth of lawn art since October. The artworks that they stole included Buddha yard statutes, a life-sized aluminum colt, a 3-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary and a copper statue of three children valued at $15,000. Detectives think that the metal works of art may have been broken up and sold to recyclers, while the other pieces might have been resold. After reading this story I began to question as to how somebody gets away with stealing a huge statue and wondering how he was still getting away with stealing more statues. I looked up "statue theives" on google and found that there was a similar story of stealing statues in Conneticut. I clicked on the story and read it. This story was about a man that stole a 450 pound statue of a woman and tried to sell it at a scrap metal yard. This guy was caught and the statue was recovered, missing the woman's head on the statue. The 43 year old man,  Sean P. McNee, was held on a $150,000 bond pending arraignment in Norwich Conneticut Superior Court. The life-sized statue marked the grave of Sarah Larned Osgood and was part of the Osgood family memorial at the Yantic Cemetery on Lafayette Street in Norwich. After I read this story I had more questions. I then went back to google and typed in "metal theft" and to my surprise wikipedia actually had an article on the subject. The article says that metal theft happens when prices for scrap metal rise. People will steal metal and can sell it almost anywhere for a good price. Different metals bring in different prices. The more metal you have, the more money you make and metal can be found everywhere you look. After I read all of this stuff some of my questions had been answered but not all of them. I found the answers as to why somebody would want to steal metal and sell it, but I didn't understand how on earth somebody gets away with something like that. Oviously if you can steal it, without somebody seeing you do it, then you will have no problem selling the metal. How on earth does somebody not get caught stealing a 600 pound gold moose?! I don't understand that! Come on people! Didn't anybody see this guy trying to put this thing in the back of a truck or something? It's a frickin' huge golden moose for goodness sake! How did this guy get out of there with that thing without anybody seeing him and stopping to wonder why this guy was loading a 600 pound moose statue into the back of a truck in front of a museum?! It's not like the guy could just tuck this thing under his shirt and sneak out the door with it. He had to get that thing out of the building somehow and I can't believe that nobody saw him. I've been reading about a lot of stealing going on, but reading about how somebody got away with stealing a huge golden moose takes the cake! I about died laughing just thinking about some guys trying to load this thing up and take it away somewhere, probably to be scrapped. I bet they make a pretty penny on that thing! That's a lot of metal! 600 pounds! People are crazy these days. A friend of mine once told me that crack heads will steal anything, so I honestly believe that the stolen moose idea was defanitely done by a crack head! HA! HA! HA! I feel bad about the statue getting stolen. Nobody likes to have something stolen from them, but this story was hilarious!

Spring Break

I thought that I would blog about my spring break. Hopefully a lot of other people will be doing the same thing, because I think it's fun to read what people did when they had a little time away from their school responsibilites. A friend of mine said she had to do a bunch of homework on her spring break! UGH! Poor girl! Anyway, where to begin? I kind of wanted to go out and be a crazy 23 year old for once, but it was cold all week and I miss my daughter when I go out. Besides, I'm sure that spring break is just another reason for the cops to pull you over and spoil the fun. :P No offense to you criminal justice majors! I know you are just trying to keep us all safe. After all the debating about going out sometime during spring break, I decided that I would just rather stay home and spend time with my daughter and husband. I bought a few new movies and still haven't watched them. I'll get around to it eventually. I did, however, finally decide to make a Facebook for myself. I made one on Friday and already have 81 friends on there! WOW! I know a lot of people! I really was against getting a facebook, but my friends and co-workers convinced me that I needed one. I actually had a good outcome from making a Facebook and that was that I found a friend of mine that I haven't seen or heard from in years! She was my best friend when we were younger and I have really missed her since she moved away. I'm so glad I found her. She came over to my house yesterday and hung out with me. It was a great reunion! She has a two month old baby and is going through a divorce so she moved back to town to live with her mom for a little while and get back on her feet. She said she moved away from her now ex-hubby because he started gettting into some things that she didn't approve of. She said he was always coming home all messed up and started beating on her and so she decided she wasn't going to live like that. I have to say, I'm very proud of her because nobody should have to live like that and a lot of times it's hard for somebody to get away from a situation like that. I'm glad she got away from that before it got worse and she wound up on the 6 o'clock news. I got her a job, at Dairy Queen, where I work. It's not much but she said she needed a job and that anything would help right now. She has a nursing license but she has to get it transferred to Missouri before she can go back to nursing. I'm just glad she is okay. She seems glad to be back in town. Her baby is cute! Speaking of babies, my 8 month old daughter has been throwing fits lately. She is at that age where they start to test their boundries with temper tantrums. She gets mad if she can't have her way and she throws a fit at bedtime too. My husband and I have been working with her all week to make sure that she knows that she can't have her way all the time. I think I am doing better than my husband though, because he can't stand to see her upset and he gives into her before I will. She is doing a lot better though I think. She refuses to take her binki anymore, not that thats a bad thing because thats just one less thing that I have to ween her off of. We have a habit of rocking her to sleep and she refuses to be rocked to sleep anymore. We have now been practicing feeding her and then placing her in the crib and leaving the room. She's been taking it pretty well, because instead of screaming and throwing a fit, she now lays down and lets us cover her up and she pulls her little baby doll close to her and goes to sleep. She seems to understand the "bedtime" and "naptime" concept! Thank God! I'm so glad she is the way she is. She really isn't a pain in the butt. She's usually a really good baby and I'm so glad that switching her bedtime routine hasn't upset her to much! Well, thats about all the highlights of my spring break! Hope to read some other interesting spring break stories this week from my classmates! Hope everyone had a wonderful break as well!

Mother Nature's Anger

It seems that when things get bad, they always get worse. I've have a friend that says, "Bad things always happen in three's". I belive that must be true, but it seems to be happening a lot lately. As if this recession isn't enough to create havoc and devestation on this earth, Mother Nature seems to be getting her hands dirty to. We already have to worry about the stock market crashing and the housing market and banks going under. Busnisess are going under everyday and people are losing their jobs. Prices are going up on everything and nobody can afford to pay their bills. Everybody in everypart of the world is at war or fighting in a war. People are rioting and getting out of control. The crime rate is rising and people are very worried about the general outcome of the life they live in this world today. On top of all this, Mother Nature has stepped in and made everything ten times worse than what it already is. I'm not sure if it's God that is angry at the world or if it really is just Mother Nature letting off some steam, but the disaster's around the world are really hitting everyone hard and in every season too. In summer the weather has been extremely hot. In some parts of the world it caused horrible heat wave problems. In spring there is the rain and tornadoes and thunderstorms. Some parts of the world have big flooding situations. In winter there has been so many snow storms that many people that used to not even get snow have accepted that it will snow in the winter season. With all this crazy weatherngoing on everywhere it just doesn't seem that it couldn't get any worse, but Mother Nature has pushed it to a whole new level. I'm sure by now that everybody has heard, seen, or read about the natural disaster that happened in Japan. Japan is a very small continent but it is very overpopulated with billions of people. Japan has the 3rd largest population group in the world. This disaster has taken out almost half of Japan. If you don't think that isn't gonna have a huge impact on the world then you are dead wrong. Japan was struck by an earthquake that was a 9.0 on the richter scale and then they were immediately engulfed in a huge tsunami following the earthquake. Those two disasters alone have killed millions of people. Now that all that has happened the aftermath of these two disasters are set on finishing the job. There are tons of aftershocks everyday. An aftershock is a mini-quake, but can be scary because it could be the warning sign of another big earthquake on the way. There could be several of these mini-quakes before they turn into something destructive. Everyone in Japan is cowering over any and all of the aftershocks they are feeling everyday. The earthquake and tsunami have also created thousands of fires that are out of control and all of these problems are now effecting the nuclear plants in Japan. There have been several explosions at the plants and many people are being warned to get somewhere safe indoors in order to get away from radiation posioning. The radiation leakage is spreading to a wider range everyday and Japan is asking for more help from other countries to help cool the reactors so the problem doesn't get worse. This Japan disaster has been titled as "a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish". The earthquake alone has been deamed the 4th most powerful earthquake in the world since the 1900's. This disaster is estimated to cost about $180 billion dollars to repair, making it the 3rd worst economic crisis in the world. I was very sad when the earthquake in Haiti happened and they are still helping to rebuild the disaster effects over there, but this disaster in Japan takes the cake. No matter what anybody says we Americans rely on Japan for a TON of resources. Japan is an ally of ours and we are already having recession problems of our own right here in America and now half of Japan has gone under. It is going to take months just to tally up the death toll and years of rebuilding to get this country back on it's feet. This is not just a little piece of Japan that has gone under, it's HALF the country! That is a big piece of an economy that needs repairing. Keep in mind though, that we need Japan. We rely on them. It's like a dominoes effect. If they go down, then other countries maybe brought down with it. We are all connected whether we like it or not. In the last 4 days alone, the stock market has seen devastating numbers. Stocks have fallen dramatically because of what is happening to Japan. The stock market in Japan has been closed down due to the disaster's effects. Their stocks are "free falling" because of this disaster and, if you pay close attention, our stock market is slowly starting to reap the effects of the Japan disaster too. This crisis in Japan is a very critical time for them and I'm not even sure that they can even really fully recover from it. Of course we can rebuild buildings and put out the fires. Things can be fixed, but the lives lost and the damage that is left behind for these people is very dramatic. Do not be fooled by thinking that just because Japan is on the other side of the world that this will not effect you because it will. This is a major disaster that the world wasn't prepared for and it will effect everyone in the world. What if all these devastating things that have been happening in the last few years are the signal that the end is near? It's such a big thing to even imagine that our existence could be wiped away. I myself am having a hard time believing that it could happen and I'm not even sure if I want to believe something like that, but all those parinoid people that believe in things like the "End of Days","The Mayan Calander", and " 2012" may have a couple of good argument points. My opinion is that only God can decide our fate and if he chooses to end the world then that is his plan and there is nothing that we can do about it but to accept our fate. There are things in this world that are bigger than us humans and there are things that we can't stop. Hopefully nothing like 2012 will ever happen though, because it's just to much to think about.

Florida Toddler Shot in Head in Drive-By Shooting

I was going through my usual routine of sifting through the latest news stories when I came across a headline that froze me to the core when I read it. The headline of this article is exactly what the headline says, "Toddler in Florida Shot in the Head in a Drive-By Shooting". I read through the article and then I, of course, watched the little video clip at the bottom. To sum this story up, a man and his 1 year old son were just hanging out watching t.v. The dad said that they had just moved to the neighborhood in Orange County, Florida and that he had just been sitting on the couch and the baby in his walker, watching t.v. like any other night. All of a sudden somebody drove down their street and pointed a gun out of their car at the home of Eugenio De La Cruz and his 1 year old, Isaiah. The man did a drive by on this home and the bullet went through the front door and through the back of the toddler's head. Isaiah's father immediately rushed him to the hospital and the doctors say that he will survive and is doing extremely well and that the bullet was found lodged in his head near his forehead. Isaiah's father told the police that he did not know who the gunman was or why he wanted to shoot at his home, because he had just recently moved to the area and did not know a lot of people in the area especially anyone who would want to hurt him. I don't understand who would do such a thing. People are sick and I hope they find the murder or murderer's that shoot that little boy because he could have died and that would have been a real shame. That little guy is only one year old. He hasn't even begun to live his life yet and in that little instant it could have been over with in a second. I hope they find those slimy creeps and get that little boy and his father some justice because they did not deserve to witness such a horrible thing. People are just sick! How would that gunman feel if somebody came and took away somebody that he dearly loved in an instant when they had done nothing to them?! If that would have happened to me I would have been devestated and extremely pissed all in the same moment. Somebody get John Walsh on the phone so that this family can have some peace of mind and so that these criminals that did this can be brought to justice for what they've done to these people! For those of you that don't know who John Walsh is, he is the host on America's Most Wanted and because of his show he has helped people bring down a ton of creeps and criminals and has gotten justice for thousands of people. John Walsh's son was kidnapped and murdered and that is the reason that drove him into making the America's Most Wanted show. He wants to help other victoms get justice for their loved ones that have gone through the same things. I watch his show every Saturday night and you won't believe some of the crazy and heart breaking stories that they have on there. It makes you want to lock your children inside and never let them out! The reason why I brought John Walsh into this blog is because there was a story sort of like the article above but it was even more brutal than that. In the America's Most Wanted story, a man went to go visit his friend and parked in his drive way with the windows rolled down. He left his sleeping baby in the car and went to go see if he was home before getting the baby out and waking him. He had made his friend his son's God father and was taking the baby to see him for the first time in weeks. When the dad parked in his friend's drive way there were two men waiting there to rob him. The men pulled the dad out of the car and forced him up to the door of his friend's house at gun point. The men then shoved the father inside and shot everyone in the home and then took off out the front door. On the way down the drive way, they saw the baby in the car and shot him in the head. The baby's God father escaped with his life and found the baby in the car bleeding to death, but he was still alive. He wrapped the baby up in a blanket and started running down the street. He stopped a school bus that was heading back to the bus yard with an empty bus. After stopping the bus, the man ran inside the bus and shoved the baby into the bus driver's arms and told her to get help. The man then ran down the street and out of sight. The bus driver rushed the baby to the hospital but the poor little thing died. They buried the father and his son in a single casket. The baby's mother is still alive and she wants these murderer's to face justice for what they did to her innocent family. It's a very sad story and I think that everybody should click on my links because I guarantee you will read everybit of them. I just wanted to point out how sick people can be and that you never know when you or a loved one might become a victom and see your family on America's Most Wanted crying out for help. I think everyone should be watching that show so you can be aware of the creepo's that are still out there and haven't been caught. Just one phone call with a good tip can help save thousands of lives and get justice for others.

The Circle of Life

I'm sorry I've posted my blogs so late in the week this week. I usually try to post them on Monday or Tuesday, so then everybody has a chance to read them and leave a comment, if they want. It's just been a pretty hectic week for me. I have a speech that I have to give for my Comm 100 class on March 19th, so I have been working on that. I get a little nervous about "speech", although, I think everybody does to some extent. When I get nervous about that stuff it's like a chewing the end of a pencil kind of thing, so I've really been buckling down and working really hard on this speech so I can earn a good grade. It really doesn't help when the teacher is always leaving announcements that say things like: "Be prepared, this is not going to be a walk in the park." and " This will not be an easy course if you don't earn a good grade on your speeches". In a way, I'm kind of glad that she does that because it makes people more cautious and I believe she is trying to make sure that everyone works hard so that way they can get a good grade. Anyway, besides working hard on my speech I have also been studying for mid-terms and everyone knows how that can be. I already took my math mid-term exam but I'm still studying for history's exam. I believe it is next week too! YAY! On top of studying and just doing schoolwork in general, I've been a little busy with my 8 month old daughter, Macy. She has been sick this week. I have really bad sinus and allergy problems and I think she might have inherited those things from me, because when the weather changed I got sick with a sinus infection and so did she. She also has two top teeth coming in, I can feel them, but they are not all the way through yet. Macy has been uncomfortable with all this and she's been a little crabby. She usually never cries, but this week she has been very uncomfortable with all the things she has to deal with. When she gets like this, she likes to cling to me all day long! Thank God for naps! My husband's birthday was yesterday, Thursday, and he just turned 32, so we are dropping the baby off at my mother's tonight for a few hours and then we are going to Joplin to go to dinner and then shop around for a bit. He wants some new sunglasses and to browse the video games for his XBox and I love to go to Victoria's Secret, especially since they make comfy clothes. Anyway, I am trying to get my homework done now, since Macy is taking a nap and we will be out for the evening. On top of all of this hectic week, I got a call from my grandma this morning. She sounded upset, so I asked her what was wrong and she said that the doctors told her today that there wasn't anymore that they could do for my grandpa and that they think he has an estimated time of about 2 weeks left to live. I really wasn't sure what to say to her. It's very sad news. My grandpa has been alive for 91 years, and has been with my grandma for 67 years. They have always been inseprable. My grandma never drives the car because my grandpa always goes with her everywhere and so he always drives the car. I'm not really sure what to say to her though. What do you say to a lady that has shared her entire life with a wonderful man for 67 years and has never been separated from him? I went and took the baby up to the hospital today to see him for a bit. He played with the baby for a while and so did my other family members who were there visiting. He doesn't look to bad, but I'm sure that's not how he feels. He suffered a silent heart attack a couple months ago and it damaged his heart. He has a pace maker and it sends readings to the doctor and the doctor got the readings and made him come in. He put some stints in his heart and he was alright to go home after that. About a month later he suffered another silent heart attack and the doctor made him come in. He put a couple more stints in his heart and told him that he could not put anymore stints in so if he had another heart attack he would not survive it. He sent my grandpa home and 3 days later we had to rush him to the hospital because he said he couldn't breathe. They found that he was bleeding and losing blood but they couldn't figure out where he was bleeding from. They did every test they could and still couldn't find it. Now his blood pressure will not stay stabilized and they can't send him home unless they could figure out how to stabilize it. They've done everything they can now and they still can't stabilize his blood pressure. They said that he is just getting old and that his heart is wearing out. I understand that they've done everything they can do and now he just has to wait until God comes for him, but I don't think that it has really sunk in for me yet. I don't think it will until it actually happens. I'm one of those people that has to see it to believe it. I just don't think that I have excepted to believe that he will be gone within; two weeks time. When he does pass, thats when it will hit me. I eventually found my voice and told my grandma that he's just getting old and he's had a wonderful life with us all and that it's just part of the circle of life. Your born, you live, and then you die. You just have to make the most of your life while you're here on earth. This is the exact same thing that my dad said to me when my great grandma on my mother's side died. She died when I was 12. I didn't even really know that lady that well, but when I saw her in the open casket at the funeral home, I cried. I just hope that the place we go when we die is a better place than being on earth, becuase if it isn't then everybody is getting ripped off and that dieing really does suck! I'm just going to try to let Macy and myself spend the amount of time he has left with him. I know my grandma will be very sad when he is gone, but hopefully we can all keep her from being depressed. My sister and I always go over there everyday to see her so she will not get lonely. Macy cheers her up a lot too. Babies always have a way of putting a smile on somebody's face.

Pot Growers Use Alligator To Protect Stash in California

I like to look at the latest news stories and I love to read the interesting stories. If they aren't interesting then forget it. Today, when I was browsing through the latest news stories, I came across a very interesting and hilarious story. In this article, I found that there are some people who seem to think that a guard "dog" isn't a good enough lookout. A 29-year-old man by the name of John Nathan Donna thought that his 2,300 marijuana plants would be better protected if they were guarded by a 4 foot alligator. The 55 pound gator was helping to guard the marijuana plants by being the security guard or "watchgator". "Wally" as the gator is called, was being kept in a back room of the house in a black cement-mixing tub full of water. The gator was being kept as a pet, but also was used in the growing area to protect the pot. The gator was captured and handed over to the Phelan-based Forever Wild Exotic Animal Sanctuary, who reported this statement:

"He was extremely healthy -- a little too well taken care of," said Joel Almquist, who runs the sanctuary. "It's still an alligator; some are pretty mellow, but if you get bit by a three-footer, you're going to remember it for a long time. It's kind of like being bit by a vise with teeth. It's not a pleasant experience."

As for Mr. Donna, he was arrested and booked for investigation of marijuana cultivation and possession. John Donna was released on a $100,000 bond on Tuesday.


Ok, so I'm wondering how in the heck do you even get an alligator in the first place? I looked this answer up and found a much more in depth report on this story. This article tells a little bit about how some people come across alligators and take them home with them and it also goes more in dept with the whole story about the "watchgator". In this article it says that gators are actually fairly easy to get your hands on and they are fairly cheap too! It says that they are easily obtained on the Internet or from other states. I guess this is a little more convincible considering that I figured the only way that somebody would be able to get an alligator is by going down to a Bayou and catching one yourself and bringing it home! It figures that I would think that though, because I do live in Southern Missouri. Or maybe it's because I watch to many old Adam Sandler movies. Anyway, I thought this story was pretty funny. Some people do some crazy things to protect their "stash" I think I really liked this story because it wasn't another tradgic drug and murder story. This story didn't have any blood or murder like most drug related stories, instead, it had a really funny twist. I'm more a normal animal pet owner, rather that the exotic reptile type. But, to each their own opinion. I can't believe that it was so well taken care of! This guy is crazy! The article says that small gators will leave a scratch and that if you get bitten or attacked by a gator bigger than 3 feet then it's gonna leave some scars! This guy is lucky he was never bitten by his pet gator. Sounds like Mr. Donna got what was coming to him. What was he thinking having that many plants in his house?! That is a lot of plants growing in one house. I bet his entire house smelled like marijuana. Oh well, I guess eventually everybody who runs an illegal drug operation gets caught in the end. Thats why nobody should even start getting into that kind of thing, because it always ends with jail time. That kind of a record will follow you and haunt a person for the rest of their lives. This kid I went to school with got into selling drug and then one day I saw his name on the front page of the paper one morning. He was busted with like $80,000 worth of meth, 28 illegal weapons, and two stolen dirt bikes. I couldn't even believe it. I never would have guessed he was doing that! He was always real quiet in school. Guess you just never know how people will end up some day.

Parental Advisory

Most people keep an eye on what their children are absorbing in their tiny little minds these days. When I was a kid, my parents didn't really care what we watched, except for movies with nudity in them. That was a different time then. Back then nobody really cared about what their children watched on television, because it wasn't really a big concern in those days. Things have changed and times have changed. Now a days you really have to watch what your child is watching on television or in the movies that we let them take in, because if you don't it can have some serious consequences. The things that we watch now a days are not acceptable for a child to watch. The number one reason for screening what your child watches is because they do not understand that the things that are going on in the movie are not real and that they are fake. Children do not comprehend that it's all just a bunch of props and make-up. They think that what they are watching is real and nobody really takes the time to explain to them that it's not real. The reason for this blog that I am writing is to share a story about a parent that doesn't seem to think that he should be screening what his child watches. My husband has a friend, his name is Ryan, and he has two really adorable children. Ryan is kind of a loser. He lost his job last May and so I took pity on him and got him a job at Dairy Queen, where I work. Ryan and his wife are divorced. I believe I understand why she divorced him. His ex-wife, Samantha, is a very sweet person. I've met her and she is very tolerable, considering that Ryan is very irresponsible. A typical day for Ryan is that he is 32 and lives with his mom. His mom cooks, cleans, and pretty much wipes his ass for him. All he does is spend his paycheck, which isn't very much, on pot, movies, and video games. He gets his kids every other weekend. He has a four year old named Gaven and a 2 year old named Chloe. Half the time, he doesn't really acknoledge Chloe and he treats Gaven like he is his bet friend instead of his 4 year old son. With all this said, Ryan lets his son pretty much do as he pleases and since Ryan's typical day is to smoke pot, watch movies, and play video games, that is what Gaven does, except for the smoking pot. I've told Ryan repeatedly that he shouldn't let Gaven know that he smokes pot, because it's going to come back on him in a very bad way one of these days. He took my advice and doesn't do it around Gaven anymore, but he still lets Gaven watch and play the video games and movies that he watches. It doesn't sound that bad, but the movies that Ryan lets Gaven watch are "Nightmare on Elm Street" and " Friday the 13th" and "Halloween". Gaven's favorite characters are Freddy and Jason. Ryan does not see a problem with letting him watch this kind of stuff. Well, one day his wife called him to tell him that Gaven had gotten in big trouble and that Ryan was not allowed to let him watch those kinds of movies anymore because of what he did that day. Gaven had gotten in trouble and Samantha had told him that since he was in trouble then he wasn't going to get to watch "Pinoccio" that day. Gaven got angry because he couldn't watch the movie and ran into the kitchen and got a kitchen knife and stood over Samantha and said, "If you don't let me watch Pinoccio then I will stab you like Freddy and Jason does!" Samantha freaked out and took the knife from him and explained to him that if he stabbed her then she would bleed to death. She then explained to Gaven that those things in the movies are not real and that it is not okay to stab anybody. She also told Gaven that she was calling his dad and letting him know what he did and that she was going to inform him not to let Gaven watch those types of movies anymore. Smantha then sent Gaven to his room and called Ryan to tell him what had just happened. Although Ryan promised not to let him watch those types of movies again and had a talk with Gaven on the phone about what he had done, he did not keep this promise. He still lets Gaven watch scary movies and lets him play video games that involve murdering people. He just let Gaven watch Paranormal Activity 2 in the last couple of weeks. I think that he should be taking Samantha's warning seriously before the consequences get worse than that one incident. Tell me what you think. Maybe I'm just being a neurotic freak, but it just doesn't seem right. I wouldn't let Macy watch those things unless she is at an appropriate age to watch such things. They do have age warnings on every movie for a reason! Besides, you would think those kinds of movies would give a kid nightmares! I saw "Freddy" when I was young and I had nightmares for weeks about that guy!

A Tornado Sized Scare

I have never in my life witnessed an actual tornado. I have seen tornado footage on television, documentaries, movies, and magazine's just like everyone else in the world has. I've heard tons of personal expierence stories from friends who have been in a tornado. I live in Lamar, MO and in the 21 years that I have lived here, I have never seen a tornado rip through here. With all this being said, I have never went to the tornado shelter in town. Yea, I've heard the sirens go off several times in my life, but I've just never felt like the weather was bad enough to get in my car and go take cover at the town shelter. I live in a two story apartment and we do not have a basement around here to go to, so my husband and I have just always stayed here even when the weather is bad and the sirens would go off. I do recall one time when my husband convinced me that I had to take all the pots and pans out from under the cabinet in the kitchen and get in the cabinet and hide. That did not go very well for me because our kitchen cabinets are really not that big. I got in that cabinet and almost got stuck and couldn't get out. My husband found this little prank to be very hilarious while I was stuck in the cabinet and freaking out. He finally helped me out and we laugh about it now. I never fell for that prank again. Anyway, things are different now because we have a 7 month old daughter. I could never let anything bad happen to my daughter. I finally got my first tornado scare this past Saturday. For those of you that live in the four state area, you know what I'm talking about. On Saturday night, I was just sitting on the couch doing my History homework, the news was on the televison right in front of me. A severe weather alert warning popped up on the screen for like the 5th time, but this time it said that there was a tornado spotted on the ground in Mindenmines, MO and that it was headed straight down highway 160 towards Lamar. The weather alert was advising for residents of Lamar to take cover immediately. My husband had just laid my daughter down to bed about a half hour ago and he was upstairs in our bedroom playing the XBox. I yelled up the stairs for him to come downstairs for a minute. He came downstairs and I explained to him what the weather alert just said because I was a little concerned for my daughters safety at this point. He walked out the back door to look up at the sky. It was calm outside right when he went out there and after standing out on the back porch for a minute or two the wind started to pick up. After about another minute the wind really started to roar. There isn't a whole lot of anything that concerns my husband, but at this point he turned to me and said, "Go upstairs and bring the baby down here, now." At this point, my nerves were starting to stand on edge and I immediately went to go do what he told me to do. I brought the baby downstairs and she was still sleeping on my shoulder. I got to the kitchen and saw my husband still out on the back porch with the door open. He was talking to the neighbor about the situation with the weather. Brian was explaining to him that there was a tornado headed straight for Lamar. Our neighbor must not have been watching the news, because he just thought there was a thunderstorm coming. I then stated to Brian that the sirens haven't even gone off yet and that we shouldn't freak out just yet about going somewhere for cover. Right as I ended that sentence, the sirens went off and it started to rain. My husband looked at me and said, "You have 10 seconds to get what you need and get in the car, give me the baby and hurry up!" I immediately did what he said and ran to get my jacket, something warm for the baby, the diaper bag, my purse, and a baby blanket. After I collected all those things I was out the door towards the car in exactly 10 seconds. My husband already had the car ready to go and the baby strapped into the car seat. I jumped in and buckled up. I then looked back at the baby and she had a really funny dazed and confused look on her face. I smiled at her and said, " we are gonna go bye- bye for a minute." She still just stared at me with the same confused look. Brian took off down the road and told me that we were going to his friends basement. By the time we got to his friends house, it was starting to hail nickle sized hail. I told Brian to cover the baby's head and get her inside as fast as he can. We ran inside his friends house and went down to the basement with the others that were there. The wind and the hail started roaring and coming down so hard that I really thought that this was it, my tornado expierence. Lucky, the storm finally died down and everyone came up from the basement and the weather man cancelled the tornado warning for our area for the night. Relieved, I asked Brian if we could go back home now. He said yes and we got in the car and went home. I put the baby back to bed and finished my History homework and went to bed myself. I'm just so glad that it wasn't a real tornado. That was the first time I was really scared that we were going to be hit by one. I think it might have just been my parental instincts to protect the baby, but I'm glad we went and took cover. I guess I will be taking the weather warnings a little more seriously from now on.