Shut it down

We had a tornado here Sunday evening. We were lucky and got no damage at all. But sadly, there were some homes, schools and other buildings that were ruined on the other side of town — in a not-rich neighborhood. One person died and several others were injured.

We heard the tornado warning, and I said to Biscuit, "Let's go. Tornado warning. Right now."

Biscuit freaked out a little bit, but I told him it was very unlikely that we would see one, but we needed to be careful just in case.

Jeff and I did the usual. We grabbed pocketbook and wallet, cellphones and chargers, laptops, tablets ... oh, and some actual useful things like shoes, flashlights and weather radio.

We have a half-bath in the center of the house with four solid walls and no windows. So we went there to hunker down. Jeff said he lucked out because he got to sit on the toilet. Biscuit sat cross-legged in front of Jeff, and I sat with my back against the door. Being short actually came in handy because with my legs straight out, my back touched the door, and my feet barely touched the vanity.

It was such a fast-moving storm, our tornado warning was only 15 minutes. We dragged our stuff out of the bathroom and went to look outside. The wind had blown like crazy, but we only had a few sticks lying around, no limbs or anything big.

Several schools were closed Monday and Tuesday while they figured out if they could open the schools back up or if they would need to shift kids to other places. So they cancelled school for the whole county so all the kids would ultimately have the same amount of days in school this year.

So I worked from home so I could stay with Biscuit.

Yesterday, I started working about 8:15. Biscuit was up, and Jeff was getting ready to go to the office. So I figured I'd just get going.

I was doing some mindless compiling from multiple websites. We have between 15 and 20 outdoor summer concert series, and I always run a roundup of them in early May. It's sort of mindless when you can just copy and paste from one place to another, so I completely lose track of time.

About 7:15 p.m., Biscuit walked up to me and said, "Mom, it's time to stop working now."

I was caught off guard, so I looked up and said, "What?"

"You started work at 8:15 this morning, and now it's 7:15 at night," he said. "It's time for you to stop."

"You know what?" I said. "You're right."

So I immediately closed my laptop. I hadn't even closed out of the programs I was using, but it seemed important to him to see me stop, so I did. And then after Biscuit went to bed, I went back and shut down my laptop properly.

My boy is very thoughtful sometimes.