Meeting Persephone

What did we get done this weekend? Very little. Am I upset about that? No, not at all. Here's why.

As I'd already mentioned in a previous post, Mini Me came home with a very high fever on Friday. It was the highest I could remember her having in a very long time. Fortunately the fever broke in the middle of the night once she'd gone to bed. We did not get the grocery shopping done like we'd hoped but it was ok. I'd also spoken to my dad (he still lives in the desert though he hates it - don't really blame him for that. He grew up in Montana too.). He informed me that it was snowing there and was going to continue doing so for the next couple of days. Meanwhile it has been in the 80s here. Must be the apocolypse....

Saturday morning Mini Me awoke and decided that she felt she could go to work despite not feeling 100%. She didn't care to have more than 2 weeks pay missing from her next paycheck and while she felt a bit rough, she made it through the day with her dad taking her some gatorade and tylenol around lunch time. She still has a sore throat but that hasn't stopped her from talking!

Hubby and I spent Saturday trying to move a walk-in shower unit into our house. He'd called a friend at work to arrange borrowing a trailer to move the unit from the store to our house. His friend said he'd need him to be on the job site within the hour because he was soon to be leaving work so he could go to his own wedding. LOL Initially I thought this was a strange way to start off your wedding day, but then it soon occurred to me that being busy with work was likely a great way to keep the nerves at bay after remember how long our wedding day had been all those years ago. Because this particular fellow was a bit antsy about marriage to begin with it was probably the perfect solution for him. But I digress. I'll just say that I wish them the best in their marriage....

Hubby arrived home with shower unit in tow. We'd measured the space we wanted it to go into countless times and it was going to fit beautifully. What we'd neglected to do was measure the doorways to make sure we could get it into the house! What to do? Hubby pulled out his handy dandy tape measure after realizing there was no way the shower would fit through the doorways and began measuring windows. We have 3 large windows in this house and he found that the shower unit should fit neatly through one of them. We unload the shower off of the trailer and move it to the side of the house where Hubby had removed the storm window and the window itself. I moved the dining room table and chairs out of the way and prepared to receive the shower through the window with Hubby pushing it in from the outside. Attempt 1. Failure. Attempt 2. Failure. Pull out measuring tape again. Re-evaluate the conditions. Attempt 3. Failure. This thing is NOT going to come into this house and even if we could have gotten it in, there is NO way we were going to get it into the shower room because the doorways are too narrow. SO... reload shower unit onto the trailer, return it to the store, get money back and resign ourselves to the idea of creating a custom shower instead. The fun never ends.

Hubby picks up Mini Me after returning shower to the store and we are preparing to head out to do the grocery shopping when storms settled in across the area and we decided to wait it out. We tuned into the local weather and watched something I found to be truly remarkable and awesome. The helicopter pilot was able to spot rotation in the clouds and managed to capture for us on video, from beginning to end, a tornado in its 20+ minutes of life. I've watched video of tornadoes before but they've typically been after the fact. We were watching, live on television, a tornado from formation until it became so rain wrapped it could no longer be seen and this went on for about 20 minutes. While I worry about human life (and one man was killed by lightning by this storm whilst riding his motorcycle), I was so enthralled by the rarity of such an event that I couldn't help but be awestruck by it. The helicopter pilot had the camera rolling and thought he'd seen some rotation starting. He stopped the helicopter to make certain that it was in fact rotation in the clouds and not just movement from the helicopter. It was actual rotation. You could see the clouds churning up in the sky in a circular motion almost inperceptible at first and then beginning to gain motion and speed right before your eyes. Soon enough air and spin had built up that the tornado began drawing down to the ground, over the farmlands in this very rural area, and debris began to fly inside of this well formed tornado. I sat here watching with my mouth agape and eyes glued to the screen as Johnny Rowlands, helicopter pilot extraordinairre, expertly negotiated the winds of the storm to keep us well informed of the path the tornado was taking. In total it was on the ground for about 20 minutes but to be able to witness a tornado, a completely unpredictable phenomenon, from the very beginnings to the end was a gift. To my knowledge no lives other than the one I'd mentioned were lost and it looked as though only 3-4 houses were damaged or destroyed in the path of the storm.

We headed out to do our weekly shopping when text messages started coming in on Hubby and Mini Me's phones (I have no friends! lol) asking if we were ok following the earlier storm but if we were aware that there was a new one building up just then. "Are you safe?" texts were bombarding their phones and frankly I felt a bit left out so I took off with the shopping cart complaining about being unloved. Mini Me's boyfriend kept "yelling" at her via text to take cover because "there's a red spot right over you!". When she asked where the red spot was again (we were not at home) he said "right over the town!" most urgently. Of course we were cruelly laughing ourselves silly over his panic - I told her she should text him and say "OMG I SEE IT! It's right on top of me! A red spot!". Needless to say we made it home safely though Mini Me nearly wet her pants from laughing...

There is bridge construction on the overpass where we leave the interstate and head to our house and so we have to take the exit before to get home. As we're crossing the detour exit, Hubby begins to turn and I realize he's heading the wrong way on the off ramp onto the interstate! I'd been reaching for my phone at the time and yelled, "you're going the wrong way!" He quickly backs up the off ramp, cars heading up toward us for what would have been a terrific head-on collision, and gets us back on course. As he's doing this I open my cell phone upon Mini Me's prompting and there's a message - "are you safe?" She'd sent it while we were in the store and I was whining about nobody make sure I was safe but this was perfect timing for me to get the message and we were all howling! Needless to say we made it home safely and the worst of the storms seem to have passed over us for the present.

Mini Me stayed up the whole night talking about everything. It was a great time because as she grows older these times are fewer and farther between. This is the stuff that really makes me happy. I don't need extravagant vacations, fancy cars, jewelry and the like. Give me quality time with those that I love and I'm giddy for days. She finally went to bed at 6 a.m. and woke up 4 1/2 hours later with a charlie horse in each calf. Poor kid just couldn't catch a break this weekend! She's recovering from that too. Ah to be young and elastic! lol

A few weeks ago Hubby had received 2 tickets to the IRL event at the Kansas Speedway. I had no interest in going at all but it got my wheels turning as this is something right up his alley. He had recently reconnected with his best friend from junior high/high school via FaceBook (who says it's not for adults? It probably benefits us more than it does kids just for that very reason!) and hasn't seen in 25 years. Interestingly, his friend has also moved out here from Denver and has been in the area only 3 months longer than we have (8 years) though we had NO idea! Hubby had been looking for him for years and found him on FaceBook through another friend's friends list. They've been talking a bit but hadn't yet gotten together and so I suggested that he invite him to go to this big IRL event for their reunion. I'm so glad I thought of it because they had an incredible time and got to catch up! They hung out at Tony Kanaan's pit the entire time, had the scanners and headsets to listen to all of the details of the race from the drivers' points of view as well as being connected to all of the towers etc. and got to rub elbows with some of the greats of the "sport". His friend shook hands with Mario freaking Andretti and got to drool over Danica Patrick (though Hubby wasn't impressed with her AT ALL - said she was a bitch). Hubby was texting me all of the details of everything that was going on and told me that Tony said "hi". When I replied with "yeah right" he returned "no seriously, baby, he just said to tell you hi". I thought that was kinda cool because while I'm not into racing, I've liked Tony for awhile based on a piece I'd seen of him handing over his lucky charm to a terminally ill child a couple of years ago. Hubby had an incredible day and scored some cool swag but most importantly met up with an old friend. He doesn't get many days like that to himself and while he claimed he would have had more fun if it'd been us with him, I know he's full of it. It's more enjoyable to do things like that with someone who really appreciates it the way you do. Besides - I'd irritate him with my complaining about the waste and pollutants and how fun would that have been for him?? lol He came home with a smile on his face, adrenaline pumping, and the smell of AvGas in his nose. It was a great day and he deserved it.

I did laundry. No regrets. None at all.