The Food is Gone

Last week we experienced two back to back thunder storms that knocked out the power at our house both times.  I'm told it was not a tornado either time but trees and telephone polls ripped power lines down out of the skies and insurance men are crawling the neighborhood this week along side the piles of appliance boxes placed on the curb this garbage day.  With the first storm we had no electricity for two days, I didn't open the refrigerator and the house stayed fairly cool while we retreated north to spend the night at Grandma's.  The power came back for a full afternoon before the second storm hit sending cars on Main Street afloat as sheets of water fell from the sky so dense it seemed if you were standing out in it you'd drown. I lost all the food.  It got too warm and everything in the freezer thawed to fast and too dangerously for a "hurricane party" to be thrown.

Instead of restocking right away I packed the kids and headed to Lake Michigan to enjoy the day-after-the-storm waves.  The lake didn't disappoint.  Waves as high as the kid's shoulder pounded the beach and the kids.  Someone on Facebook said they were closing some beaches because of the high waves and still, I stood watch on shore while the kids squealed and pushed the limits of their bravery wading out into the turmoil. I only forced them back inland when their lips were blue and shivering and then I made them sit under dark towels in the sun until they begged to go out again.  Finally warming up fireside that night, Ella pulled out her ukulele and the kids sang all the theme songs to all the cartoons she could remember how to play until it was quiet time in the campground.  Next we told stories about the happiest we'd ever been and the most jealous we'd ever been and the most surprised we'd ever been all the while stuffing our faces with an array of various degrees of melted and burned marshmallows.  At some point Jack asked to go to bed.  We exhausted, scraped up and sunburned campers found our tents and slept hard.  We barely heard the rustling of wild animals in our campsite opening all the coolers and tightly sealed rubbermaid tubs of food or the rustling of wrappers and munching of raccoon mouths on graham crackers.  The next morning I stepped out of the tent to find, yet again, all the food gone.