I am a: Quirky sysadmin. Geek. Gamer. Comic fangirl. My little space, my home on the interwebs. I blog about personal stuffs, work, various coding projects, and anything else I feel like.

Well, I posted Saturday about the tornado that touched down just north of my house. Jessie and I have ridden around the city looking at the cleanup. There are a LOT of homes and businesses that have damage. I can’t tell y’all how lucky I feel right now. Granted, that was no F5 that came through, but it still scared the ever loving shit out of me!

Unfortunately, Jessie is now more scared of storms than ever before. Jim and I spent the majority of the weekend coddling her. I got out for a little bit last night for a walk and took her with me. She had a lot of questions about the storm, and about the people who are now trying to rebuild. We passed several houses with parts of their roof missing. Stores with mangled signs and broken windows. Hell, the 1st Baptist church is missing half its roof!

From what I could tell from talking to people who saw it and from the reports I heard on the news after the storm had passed, the tornado touched down somewhere on Hwy 31 and went north. What I did not know was that it passed either directly over my house, or was right beside it (I’m assuming it had already started funneling downward since the “touch down” spot was so close by). There’s a tall embankment right behind the house, and it’s probably what saved me and Jim … our bedroom is facing Hwy 31. The building on top of the embankment behind our house sustained a good bit of debris-damage.

The weather wasn’t all of the excitement Friday … Jessie had told me and Jim Thursday night that one of her mother’s new neighbors had threatened to shoot and kill her. I was floored!

Apparently the new neighbors had moved in a couple of months ago. Jessie’s mother and said neighbors have been squabbling over the parking spaces — both houses are located in a cul de sac, but have ample parking for each. Jessie and her mother came home one day to find that the neighbor and/or a guest (?) had parked in their spot. Jessie’s mother asked the neighbor to move the car so she could park in front of her house (a reasonable request I thought). The details are fuzzy after that, but I do know that an argument ensued, followed by a LOT of shouting, at which point Jessie and her mom go inside. Her mother had threatened to call the cops, because the neighbor refused to move the car — leaving Jessie’s mom to park her car in the middle of the street, basically blocking everyone else in. I don’t know at what point the threat was made, but Jessie’s mother told her that the neighbor threatened to shoot her with her .38.

Great, something else for that child to worry about and obsess over. She is already fixated on death! *grrrrrr* Personally, I wouldn’t have told her about that … but that’s just me.

Anyways, Jim and I may be looking into some sort of daycare service, or someone who can pick Jessie up from school so that she won’t have to go over to her mother’s house. Her mom does not live in a great neighborhood. I think 50 years ago it was really nice, but it’s run down and mostly trash live over there. Let me put it this way, delivery places like Pizza Hut, Domino’s, etc. won’t go there.

Granted there ARE some really nice people who live near her. One is even a constable, whose family has lived there for over 20 years. Nice guy, and I imagine he has a nice family.

But the new neighbors I saw Thursday when I picked up Jessie … I pulled up and all of them came out of their house. At this point, I didn’t know what had happened and thought it was really weird timing. I had a bad feeling about it though. I go into the house and helped Jessie gather her things, and she tells me what happened.

I think all of the blood drained out of my face … because I could see from the window that now all of the “offending” neighbors were standing around my car.

I hurriedly usher Jessie into the car while one woman gave me what was probably the dirtiest and most menacing look she could manage.

Now this sounds racist, but it’s not: those people were black trash pure and simple. You’ve heard of white trash right? Well, these people were just as well-mannered and refined, only slightly more pigmented.

Trash is trash in my book, I don’t give a rat’s ass what color you are!

Anyways, I had a really bad feeling leaving there. I advised Jessie’s mother when I spoke to her to hurry up and sell house the house, for both her sake AND Jessie’s. I told Jim what happened and that I will NOT be going back there alone.

I may be paranoid, but I’m not stupid either.