All right, pookies. I went quiet there for a while.

I registered for the half-marathon. I’ve been exercising and moving more, still. And after a few months of focusing on it, I have lost a little weight. We’re not talking numbers here. Kind of like with my half-marathon training, what the numbers are is the part that invites comparison, shop talk, and plenty of stuff that just seems beside the point.

So yes, I’ve lost a non-zero number of pounds. I’ve walked and run more minutes each month than in the previous.

The half-marathon is five months away. I still don’t know what it means. I’m not sure why I’m doing it, except that it seemed like such a good party to go to. And I saw other people doing it and wondered if I could. So I am.

That’s a fabulous reason, I think. But I’m also great at overworking the clay.

It may be June, but part of my brain is still stuck in spring. Tornado season for me started with a doozy: I got stuck sheltering on my way home one day, in the Waverly Pinnacle Bank as that tornado formed in north Lincoln. I watched that sucker come down from the clouds. I banged on the buzzer and rattled the locked door like a childhood nightmare come true. I grew up here: I knew what to do, I did everything I could to keep myself safe.

And that still could’ve been it. People asked if it was the most afraid I’d ever been, and it wasn’t even the fear. It was just so sad. That might’ve been it, and that would’ve sucked. It was the day after my child’s birthday. I was so sad for her, in my head, already, just in case.

I cried for a while. And then I folded that day into the rest of my life and kept going. I still can’t remember for sure, but I don’t think I’d ever had to shelter during a tornado warning anywhere besides my own home.

And then a few weeks later I went on a field trip with my kid’s class, and we ended up sheltering during a warning at a tree farm.

And then a few weeks after that, my family took our first little trip of the summer and sheltered next to an ice machine, first floor of a Holiday Inn, from 2 to 3 in the morning.

After that first one, I cried to some of my girlfriends on a few sobriety meetings, but I felt self-conscious. “I don’t want to be The Tornado Lady, like, ‘Here she is again, won’t shut up about the time she didn’t die in a tornado.’” They laughed and let me talk.

And now I’m really The Tornado Lady, huh? My family has asked me not to visit during storm season, just in case, as if I’m bringing the tornados with me when I travel.

Could I be a witch? Maybe I’ve got new powers coming in and they’re just a little out of whack. Maybe this is some sort cosmic strength training routine, and I’m being conditioned for something.

Maybe none of it’s about me, and maybe my life isn’t happening to me.

Sometimes it feels that way, though.

It hasn’t felt that way every day or every week, and there’s a lot happening to be enjoyed. I put on my shoes and go outside. I paint something because I feel like it. I read books. I go to the library with my people, again. I work. I vacuum the living room.

“Maybe this is it,” I wondered to myself some months ago. It meant something different when I thought it again, lying on a bathroom floor as a tornado crossed the street a block away.

But maybe not.

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