I was sitting on the couch yesterday, engaged in my normal Sunday morning ritual, watching bad reality tv in my pjs with a couple cats huddled on me, trying to steal attention, when my phone made the most horrific beeping noise.
Tornado Warning: Seek Shelter Immediately.
I’ll admit normally I don’t. I’ve grown up in the Midwest all of my life, and tornadoes have never scared me. I mean, it’s just wind after all, right?
Normally I hope in the car and try to sight see (Dumb, I know).
I looked outside, nothing much, but a bit of a wind whipping the leaves around and the rain. Still, I figured, I’m actually suppose to be an adult at 28 and should start acting like it, so I grabbed a couple magazines, my cats, a half-eaten pie and went down to the basement to wait it out.
By the time I made my way downstairs, the skies had blackened, baseball size hail rained down as twigs whipped against my house. The storm moved quickly. Ten minutes later an eery calm as my power went out.
My town, Stanford was lucky. (Yes I live in a town that is my last same name, so does my brother ironically.) 
We just now got power back, have a bunch of down trees (my bushes were destroyed) and a few houses lost roofs. It will take a bit to clean up, but that doesn’t at all compare to the devastation that my former hometown of Washington suffered. (Two other cities close by Pekin and East Peoria aslo got hit hard.) My former apartment complex was leveled. And the town, is pretty much in ruins.
You can view more of the carnage here.
Obviously, it’s going to be a long time until most of the smaller towns hit are cleaned up. And Washington, well, it’s going to be a very long haul for them. As of now, residents aren’t even being allowed back in the town to clean up. We have months and months of work ahead.
Please if you can, donated to the red cross.
Or check out this fb page. It has alot of information on the town and how you can help.
The result:
Street of Dreams 