City Beach
This past week we had a 30 minute storm that ripped through our little town and uprooted trees, hailed the size of nickels, wind gusts at maybe 50 mph knocked over telephone poles taking out phone service, and had the power go out for a day here and some places for 4 days. It was a mess. Lucky for me my sister in law and Dad were home. My dad got out his chain saw and started cutting down the trees on our road so my husband could get home. Also so teens could get to work and drivers education classes. We started in our drive way with a tree blocking our teardrop turn around. It was old and thin so we just pulled it to the side of the road to be cut up later. Then we started moving the bigger branches that littered the driveway and road and stacked them on Papa’s fire pit to be burned later. Honor was over helping my mom pick up the patio furniture that had blown over and was looking at her wild yellow rose bush that was uprooted and dragged from its planting bed. There was no hope to recover it. It was still raining while we were picking up branches, but it was a warm summer rain that no one minded. We made a plan to meet back the next day and pick up more branches in the meadow and along the road. Debris was everywhere and we estimated it would take about three days to clean it all up. Since we were still out of power and it had started to rain harder the boys took a rain shower on the deck. Lucky for them my camera is broken so I could not take pictures.
Our house is all energy star electric so when the power goes out we get out the old 1980’s phone that does not take electricity to run and call it in to our local company and usually the power comes back on in a few hours. But this time there was not even dial tone on the old phone. In the mean time there is no electricity to run the pump to the well so there is no water to flush the toilets, drink, wash your hands, do dishes, or the millions of other things you do with water. We can’t cook dinner because the stove is electric. We have no heat or fan depending on the season. I think worst of all is that there is no wireless access. We did have one redeeming feature, and that was the cell tower had no damage. I could still text my hubby who was in town and already had just the edge of the storm over his work. Just a little flicker of the lights for a half second.
Normally everything would have been fine, we already had a warm crock pot of spicey chicken ready to put into some chicken quesadillas, and the propane BBQ grill to cook it on. It was still thundering and lightening outside when he left for work so he opted to pick up some pizza and wings takeout along with a cooler full of ice for the freezer instead of grilling in the storm. He is such a wise man. After dinner by candlelight, we played the most competitive smack talking game of GO FISH I have ever played in my life. I have never laughed so hard in my life.
The boys were happy to get to stay up a little late and spend time together. I really liked not having the TV or internet for a couple nights. It seems like the boys like to hear the same stories over and over. The stories of when they were born, and the story of how we met. I am glad I took the time to print out the pictures off the computer and put them into a photo book they can look at any time. It’s amazing how fast the time seems to go by with them turning from babies to boys to man children in what seems like no time at all. Tomorrow we have plans to go to the beach to cool off in this heat when it is supposed to be a sizzling 100 degrees.
Until next time…have fun in the sun with spf 50!
raisingnikolasnjoe 