Henry Goes To The Mall

On Friday we were headed over toward Fort Worth to have dinner with Joey's uncle and grandparents.  The air was heavy, humid and hot.  It felt just like a tornado day back in Iowa and I told Joey so as I swept the porch right before we left.

Henry's been way cuter than normal lately, so we couldn't resist his big brown eyes and cute face.  We decided at the last minute to bring him along so he wouldn't have to be in his kennel again.

It's a 30-45 minute drive to Joey's uncle Ken's house.  Because it was a Friday night, we figured it would be more of a 45 minute drive.  Surprisingly, there was very little traffic and this struck us as odd.

About 20 minutes into the drive my phone rang.  It was Tom, Joey's other uncle.

"You guys had better get to shelter, a tornado is coming,"  He said.

"Oh, well we're in the car on the way to Fort Worth,"  I told him.

"Are you by DFW?"  He asked.

"Yep," I replied.

"GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW!  THERE'S BASEBALL SIZED HAIL COMING YOUR WAY!" 

I calmly thanked him and hung up as quickly as possible. And then I began freaking out.

"We have to park now!  Tom says baseball sized hail!  It'll wreck our car!  What about Henry!"  And so on and so forth.

We pulled off the freeway and drove over to a mall, certain that they'd have a parking garage. 

They didn't.

Joey found us a parking spot that was on the lower level of Macy's and kind of protected by the building.

"I'm not leaving Henry in the car!"  I said, "Not if there's baseball sized hail. He's coming in with me."

Joey agreed and so we picked up our puppy and ran in to Macy's.

OF ALL STORES IN THE MALL.  I guess it would have been worse if it were Nordstrom's, but honestly.

I apologized profusely as we walked in the store, carrying our fluffy puppy.  All the sales ladies ran over and said, "OH!  Your dog is so cute!"  They didn't seem mind a bit that they had a canine running around in their housewares section.

We were locked in Macy's for 20 minutes.  In that 20 minutes, we met a lot of very different people. 

--I met a little girl who thinks husbands are "gross". She told me so when she found out Joey was my husband.  Her mother does, however, have a boyfriend.  (And right after the little girl told me that her mother hauled her away to go look at towels.)

--I met a semi-intoxicated woman "dressed to the hilt" on her way to a Journey concert at the Speedway.  Tickets were $3 if she could get there by 8:00 (It was only 6:30)

--We met some teenagers who were obnoxiously loud and quite afraid of tornadoes.  (They seemed to have gotten them mixed up with hurricanes, so we were happy to straighten them out.  They were happy too.)

--Joey walked by some girl telling another girl, "OH LOOK!  It's about to strike!  When it gets real quiet and the winds stop, that means the tornado is about to hit."

(The reason it was quiet and the winds had stopped was that the storm had blown over.  The sky was blue.  We didn't bother to correct the poor thing, she'd obviously watched Twister a few too many times.)

And, thus, we decided that since the sky was blue we could leave Macy's.  Henry waved his furry little paw goodbye to his fans, and we went on our merry way.

Henry doesn't really like shopping.