BEM Day 23: Post senior skip day

Well, today was the day of the awards ceremony and then skip day.

The awards ceremony held nothing surprising. Everyone who I figured would win everything won everything. Shocking, really. Oh wait. Let's just say that I'll be glad to be out of high school to get out of the politics. Thanks, but no thanks.

But it's what happened after the boring ceremony that was really interesting/awesome.

Seven girls (including me) and two moms piled into cars and headed to Eagle Mountain Lake near Fort Worth to my friend Shannon's lake house. We picked up lunch on the way in and had a fantastic afternoon. We swam (yes, the water was freezing), napped, got on a massive float that everyone fit on and slept and tanned some more. It was a struggle to get this massive lounging float out, but it was okay. The afternoon, though it was predicted to be full of storms, was really nice and actually kind of warm. Everyone got a little tan, so that was good. I still have my impressive shorts tan, even though I put tanning lotion on the white part and SPF 70 on the already tan part.

Then, suddenly, at a little after four, it got all cloudy. We showered up a little, braided hair, ate dinner, and started a movie. Then a phone call came from home reporting that a massive wave of storms was about to roll through and we needed to get out of Fort Worth ASAP. We packed in a rush and got on the road again. Behind us, the sky was a ghostly green and weird clouds were forming that looked like they wanted to become tornadoes when they grew up. We were originally headed home but then we just decided to go down I20 and run parallel with the storm. But by the time we landed in Arlington, there were storms surrounding us that all had tornado aspirations. So we did the only logical thing: find a mall. Malls have parking garages. Everyone was keeping contact with home to see what was happening. There was some hail (some very large hail and some very little hail) and a ton of lightning. We'd been driving for about an hour and then we were in the garage for about an hour and a half. We ran into the mall to go to the bathroom at around 9 and then we just...played. We cheered cars on when they came into the garage from the hail. We played "Little Sally Walker". We took tons of pictures and a few videos.

The funny part was that everyone was texting people who had access to the news so we were always getting updates. But a lot of times they contradicted each other... Example:

Shannon: My dad says we can go ahead and start heading home now
Madison: Yeah, my mom thinks we can take highway 360
Victoria: No, wait, my dad just said that 360 is getting hammered
Mrs. Spaans: We can just go through the airport
Me: Nope. Airport is being pounded too. In other news, the Rangers game is being evacuated!
Peyton: What's getting attacked? The airport or 360?
Hannah: Both
Shannon: So...we're stuck?
Mrs. Creel: Looks like it

Yeah, welcome to our lives for about 3 hours altogether. We dubbed ourselves the storm runners.

We made it out, eventually. The lightning was ridiculous but it was pretty cool to watch. When we got to the airport, it started pouring again and didn't stop until we got back to Shannon's house. The streets of our town were flooded and the parking lot of the high school looked like a lake. I had to be really careful on the way home because there were ponds in the middle of the road. And, come to find out, there was a large one in my driveway. It's probably still there now.

It was a great day, really. I loved every minute of it.


I am...

Listening to: "Walls" by The Rocket Summer (acoustic version)
Looking forward to: Only having a few more days of school left
Procrastinating: Getting in the shower
Thinking about: My angst over having to take a final
Wondering: Why it has to be the last final ever of the 2011 school year and why my teacher won't let me take it earlier
Reflecting over: The power of God