There are flashlights and bicycle helmets on my kitchen table because I read the “alert and alive” article on weather.gov that said bicycle helmets are good things for covering your kids’ head in a tornado.

Makes sense, huh?

Our tornado plan is pretty simple.  No basement, no cellar, interior closet.  So if the storms come as predicted we’ll be in the bathtub with bicycle helmets.  Which is the next best thing.

Preparing for a storm that may or may not come made me think today about how we prepare for the storms in our lives. 

Sometimes they crop up out of nowhere, darkening the sky and taking the sun and all our hopes into cyclones of despair.

But sometimes there’s enough warning to get out of the way.  And you find yourself in the bathtub thankful enough for that. 

You may recall that I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of months sailing a pink candy boat down a chocolate river in a room of pure imagination.  And while I don’t miss dedicating my afternoons to kids I didn’t give birth to, but love anyway, I do miss having time set aside that forced my creativity.

You see, I have a really bad habit.  I love the idea of being creative.  I love writing.  I love reading.  I love watching a play morph each night into something different because the beauty of live theatre is you can never have it the same way twice. 

But I’m awful about starting projects and then getting distracted and then never finishing and then feeling worthless about having started in the first place since I never seem to finish anything.

There’s the unhung frames in our office that I was supposed to order pictures for.  The empty file boxes I bought to contain the girls’ plethera of art/school work.  The 150 pages of a book I haven’t completed and to be honest I’m not sure is really going anywhere.

But in my imagination, these things are finished.  Complete.  What’s that like?

Actually, I do have one creative outlet that I hope I’ve maintained fairly well.  You’re reading this blog, right?

And as for that book…well, I’ve told my students who are pretending they’re devastated I won’t be back next year, that I’m quitting so I can write a book.  They think this is interesting and want to know if they’ll be in it.  I smile demurely and say, “Of course.”  Which makes that conversation and binding contract because middle schoolers forget their homework, their locker combinations, and their backpacks, but they remember promises.  Which might be just the motivation I need to actually finish something I start.