“This is supposed to be a relaxing weekend!” I uttered, screamed, moaned, and exclaimed this statement MULTIPLE times over the course of the weekend. If you have to aggressively remind the universe of this, it’s a sign that things are not going as planned.
As I wrote in my last post, Christine and my relaxing best friend weekend was wonderful in many ways. Good food, relaxing, hours of chatting, drinks, hammocks, treats, laughter. It was amazing.
But this weekend was also VERY on brand for camp as we were forced to face several challenges along the way.
Friday night, it started to rain. It didn’t seem bad, so I wasn’t concerned. We were drinking cocktails and laughing hysterically and talking nonstop without little kids interrupting us. It was glorious. At 11pm the power went out. It’s been 2 years since we’ve had a power outage, but it used to be common, so it wasn’t surprising or concerning. We went to bed in the dark but we slept well and didn’t wake up until 8:30am (which may as well be noon for 2 moms!).
We woke up and the power was still out, which I knew was a bad sign. We took a tour around camp and saw shingles ripped off of roofs, trees down, branches everywhere, and a GIANT tree laying across the power lines in front of camp. Ugh.
We took the golf cart for a drive around the neighborhood and saw a pontoon crushed by a tree, a garage crushed, and dozens and dozens of tree down.
CYC had about 15 trees or giant branches down. It was a mess. I did a facebook live where I told people that we would need to have a chainsaw party and get some people together to haul logs. It will be fine, but it’s always a little overwhelming to walk around and see all of the areas that need to be cleaned up.
A piece of my trailer roof blew off (leaving a giant opening in the roof and water all over the floor). I had to climb on top to fix it (said maintenance was completed in my bathing suit, in between beach times). After fixing my trailer, I climbed down and promptly got stung by a been in the head. This is my second sting in a month and I’m pretty sick of these hornets. A little baking soda took care of my sting quickly, but the power was still out, so I had a big chunk of mess in my hair most of the day since I couldn’t shower.
Luckily our day of beach and hammocks wasn’t slowed down by no power. And the electric company was working hard all day and restored power by 6pm.
We’ve had power outages and downed tress before. It’s another thing for my “to do list” but not stressful.
And then the universe said, “hold my beer”….
Over the years, I’ve been known to use the phrase, “we should burn this down” every time I’m frustrated (so, like, basically every day at camp). That is not an appropriate joke because in the event there IS a fire, well, now I look like a criminal.
For the record, I am not a criminal mastermind, although Nate and I watch a lot of Dateline and I do think I’m pretty cunning. But after lamenting that I’d like to burn everything down during the month of July, I REALLY didn’t expect an ACTUAL fire at camp.
On Sunday morning, the power went out about 6:30am. I am a light sleeper and when I heard the fan go off, I woke up immediately, knowing the power was out again. I looked out my window to see the rain, and saw a car parked on our field, right across from our driveway. That was weird. Then I heard a siren in the distance and that’s SUPER weird (we’re in the woods, not the middle of the city).
I went to the front door to get a better view. But by then I was wide awake, so I slipped on some shoes to go investigate. When I got to the end of the driveway, a woman got out of the car, just as I turned my head to see our Nature Center ENGULFED in flames. I screamed, “WHAT HAPPENED?!” She was calm and kind and said, “I was on my porch having a cigarette and saw a flash of lightening, heard a crash, and then a few minutes we saw smoke and called 911.” In that moment, I saw the entire building COLLAPSE and I burst into tears, screaming, “OHMYGOD! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” She told me to calm down and get a cup of coffee. The state patrol was already at camp and I went to speak to him for a moment, mostly screaming, “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?” and crying. And then, in a moment of utter hysterics, I said, “I’m wearing my pajamas! I need a shirt.”
I went back to the DC to put on a bra and a shirt and yelled to Christine that camp was on fire.
When I got back outside, there were 3 firetrucks and most of the town of McGregor. The mayor, the former mayor, and the librarian are all volunteer firefighters. The guy who works at our internet company and always comes when we have issues walked up and I said, “oh! Our internet IS out!” It turns out, that guy is also the fire chief. Duh. I was not in my best frame of mind.
I spent the next hour or so standing in the drizzling rain with the firefighters. The mayor/firefighter told me multiple stories about buildings he’d seen get hit by lightning. All of the firefighters were chatty and in good spirits. Periodically I would get hysterical again and say something like, “I can’t believe this!” or “How did this happen?!” or point to the downed trees, exclaiming, “this was supposed to be a relaxing weekend!”
Eventually they got the fire out. They checked the electrical boxes to make sure everything was ok. The sheriff told me that the fire marshal wouldn’t be coming out because it was a clear case of weather. I asked what was next and what we needed to do. “Breakfast?” he said and smiled. And then they all left. The trucks pulled out, waving goodbye as I stood there, completely in shock. There is a hole in the middle of camp- just a pile of rubble.
This was a best case scenario in a crazy situation. Thank goodness there were no kids at camp. Thank goodness it wasn’t a main building we can’t live without. Thank goodness that it was raining, rather than windy since all of our buildings are made of tinder and there could have been a forest fire. It could have been worse. It was scary and shocking and I am still in disbelief.
Relaxing mom’s weekend had several relaxing and wonderful parts. But by Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted in my bones and just wanted to be home with my husband and boys. I have never been happier to get home and see them. Is 2020 over yet?