Welcome Tornado Season! – A Life Update

Happy Spring!

I wish I had an action-packed life update for you but alas…it has just been work (virtual call center), eat, and sleep since January.

Oh wait, I forgot about going from tornado sirens to snow to sun and green grass in about 16 hours.

I finished work one day in April, grabbed an apple from the fridge and went to sit on the porch and eat my apple before working overtime. I opened the door and was met with tornado sirens. (I highly recommend tornado sirens as a great late afternoon pick-me-up.) 😉

I flew back to my spare bedroom office and advised everyone in the chat I was out due to the sirens and then ran outside on the back deck to see what was going on. This picture was taken before the rain started.

What I learned from watching the Facebook live from one of the local TV stations is if the National Weather Service sees rotation on the radar they are going to issue a Tornado Warning, even if all is well on the ground. And all was well on the ground, no wind, rain, lightning or thunder.

When the rain came it was a gentle rain. I have video of the storm and a bird comes flying across the screen. There was also a lot of birds chirping in the video. I can’t get the video to upload to my blog or I would show it to you.

Then the next morning I work up to this:

Yep – snow.

Then in the afternoon, this was the scene:

Welcome to Northeast Ohio where Mother Nature’s hormones are extremely out of whack.

Book Launch

The highlight of the year so far was being on Christie Purifoy’s book launch team for her new book Placemaker, Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty and Peace. What made it so special was feeling as though we were a group of girlfriends getting together for a book club, even though we met on Facebook. The atmosphere was warm and cozy which made this launch team experience one of the best.

Bible Study

The church that I am a member of is doing the Bible Study, Experiencing God, Knowing and Doing the Will of God by Henry and Richard Blackaby and Claude King. When I found out about this, I thought “You could blog your way through this book.”

Yes, similar to the movie Julie and Julia where Julie Powell blogs about cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I need to make up my mind quickly if I am going to do this as we are already on week 3 or 4. It would mean a blog post per week for 26 weeks or I could write the posts and publish one a day the month of October in memory of the now defunct Write 31 Days.

I am through chapter 4 and have some conflicted thoughts I am mulling over.

The Soundtrack of My Spring

Here are some of the musical tracks I’ve been enjoying:

Still Rolling Stones by Lauren Daigle from her CD Look Up Child – play this every morning.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J.S. Bach (Organist Unknown)

Symphony Number 5 in C minor Op 67 by Beethoven (West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim, conductor)

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin (Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic Orchestra)

Hallelujah Chorus – London Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus, John Pritchard – I play this at the end of long, hard work days.

Stomp – Brothers Johnson – This is how I start my weekend.

Alexa played Symphony #5 and immediately went into Rhapsody in Blue which really caught my attention. I never thought putting those back to back on a playlist. Guess my Echo Dot is good for something – we have a love/hate relationship.

And speaking of playlist…I am working on creating 2 playlists on Spotify. One is entitled Cardio and the other is Inspirational. I will let you know when the lists go live.

See You In September

Well, that’s all that is new and noteworthy in my life. See you in September with another life update that hopefully will not involve tornado sirens.

I leave you with a picture of the golden retriever statue Joe bought in 2004 that I dressed up for Easter. Joe and Rommie are up their in heaven shaking their heads in disbelief. 😀

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Bio: Michele Kearns is the founder and HUG© (Hope Unites Globally) Award-Winner of JoyReturns. She shares her widowhood adventures hoping to encourage widows to move through grief and rebuild their lives. A graduate of Kent State University with a Bachelor’s degree in communications, she’s used those skills while managing call center teams, co-facilitating a grief support group, and helping small businesses with various writing and administrative assignments. Michele is a bookworm, lover of chocolate, red roses, and golden retrievers. She is also an amateur photographer.