Electricity is in the air

On Wednesday, which as everyone knows is Bodypump night in my house, the kids and I were getting along quite well. The evening routine was as chaotic as ever. I was spending more time corralling the kids than actually getting them ready, but it was fun nonetheless.

Finally, I got them to the toothbrushing part of the evening. BigBrother was running around with a medallion on a necklace from the Riviera in Vegas. I picked it up on my last trip out there, because I figured the kids would get a kick out of it (for at least 15 minutes). Somehow, it got pulled out of my night stand.

As I was brushing LittleBrother's teeth, BB was playing with the necklace in the bathroom. He swung it toward the night light, and before I could react, the chain hit between the light and the outlet. Sparks flew, the lights went out. BB stood there stunned for a minute. Then he started crying.

I was just beginning to get him calm when DearWife came in. I told her what happened, and she was so upset by it that BB started back in with the crying again for another couple minutes. Finally, everyone was settled, and we got them to bed. BB only came out of his room 3 times, he was so tired.

It was storming outside. When we turned on the TV, and the message said - I'm paraphrasing through DW's eyes here - 'you will die a horrible death if you do not immediately go to the basement.' I voted for staying up, because I've been through these things a lot, and I'm not really concerned until there is an actual tornado headed our way. But DW has 1.5 votes to my 1 on all natural disaster related topics. So we got the kids up, and took them to the basement.

I took my laptop down so we could be kept up to date. We watched shark videos on video.google.com. Played some Thomas the Train videos. About 10 minutes into our stay in the basement, DW says "I have to go to the bathroom."

"Sorry babe, either we're down here or not. I'm not letting you go up there just to have the tornado come by. You stay down here."

"But what about the cats?"

(sigh) "I'm not letting you go upstairs to chase the cats just to have the tornado come by. Look, either it's important we're down here or not. If you go upstairs, we all go."

104 shark videos and 45 minutes later, we were upstairs again. No harm done.