What do you talk about with someone when you want to tread lightly? The weather. Or, say, you are just checking the barometer, so to speak, with someone you may have offended? Talk about the weather. What about expressing concern or showing solidarity or finding common ground with a stranger? The weather is usually a safe topic.

But honestly, if you bring up the weather, it will probably strike a nerve the way that funding for special education, grant monies for my son’s therapy, protections for my transgender friends, and the callous treatment of mixed immigration status families strike me. Just one more thing that didn’t survive the bludgeoning by Elon Musk’s DOGE wand.

On Monday evening, my son went to collect the eggs from our hen house. It began hailing. He handled it like it was no big deal, and we went back to deciding who was playing fooseball next.

I started cooking dinner and let my daughter borrow my phone to listen to a book.

Suddenly, she ran to me with my phone. It was blaring that unmistakable sound from the National Weather Service.

We had a tornado warning! What in tarnation?! I was starting to tell the kids there must be a mistake when my husband rushed down from his office and said, “This is real! To the basement, everyone!”

I grew up on the plains in Northern Colorado. I’d watched storms develop and heard hail pound and watched the skies flash throughout my childhood. During the summer.

When we built our house in Oregon a few years ago, we called the basement a “crawl space” to avoid added costs associated with increased living space. If an inspector had asked, I would have cited my need for a crawl space I could stand up in because I’d had to run to the basement so many times as a kid during summer storms, and I didn’t need claustrophobic stress on top of everything else if my family needed to shelter during a storm.

I would have had to try very hard to keep a straight face. Oregon, in general, rarely gets tornadoes, and our area in particular doesn’t exactly scream tornado alley.

But there we were, looking at radar readings and swirling patterns and listening to the wind and wondering if our sixth family member, who was still at school, had found a safe place to shelter.

My youngest prayed quietly and then asked us to pray aloud as a family. The next eldest looked around for something fun to do, and their older brother read a book. I texted the women I look after at church. We received a check-in call from a neighbor just as our phones alerted us of the storm’s passing. I resumed cooking dinner, and life went on.

No tornado ever materialized, and there was debate as to whether a funnel cloud had fully formed from the photos people got, but conditions for a tornado and signs one was imminent caught the notice of our intrepid weather watchers at the NOAA and NWS.

Their warning gave us several minutes that no local resident could have given us. No one even suspected that such a thing could happen on an average winter day in the Willamette Valley.

We may not be getting any more of those distressing warnings, though. Not because tornadoes are going extinct but because a different storm is ravaging our country. The service that helped my family on Monday lost hundreds of employees today, and the administration’s trillions-in-tax-cuts plan leaves no room to restore what my family in a matter of weeks has lost.

My family has learned some resilience and has a lot of safeguards in place, so I’m not writing any of this for us.

It’s for the families and individuals lost in the howling storm that I write this.

And for those who believe the weather is fine because they are not familiar with the patterns that precede a catastrophic storm.

But at least we’ll have Trump Gaza Strip Club to warm us when all our neighbors are gone.

Earlier this week, I read from Third Nephi Chapter 16 in the Book of Mormon about what may become of this country in the Last Days. Verse 10 caught my attention:

“…lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth…”

Along with my children at their charter school on Wednesday, I placed my hand over my heart and pledged my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I pray for her more fervently than ever. Not because I’m afraid for her but because when I pray, I feel motivated again by love and abundance.

A wellspring of love and abundance–this is what a mother offers her children. She would not pit them against each other, exploit weakness, make a scapegoat of the misfit, or scorn the survivor. She would hear those who disagreed with her; she would listen with loyalty, not demand it. She wouldn’t ask “what’s in it for me?” when the beggar raised their petition.

And if she (Trump) did do all of those things due to some bizarre ruse in which she was trying to trick her greatest enemy (China), then she shouldn’t be surprised if she lost her children’s confidence and was compared to despicable historical figures (Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc.) If this mother were to crush her own people’s opposition to her ruthless ambitions, then you can be certain she is not a mother but a monster. So pay attention and be concerned.

Because not all monsters are mythical creatures, just as some mothers are, in fact, well-rested.

And this well-rested mother, however mythical she may sound, has new ambitions and won’t be providing further warnings.

Moving on.

Tomorrow night I am hosting my very own Comedy Lab. My community needs to laugh about our messy lives more, and I need to practice my (clean) stand-up comedy more, so boom! I’ve invited a bunch of people, and if I have a group of at least six people who laugh generously, I’ll post a video.

It might change the world.

Or just embarrass my kids.

Either way, we are learning, growing, and believing in a bright future together.