The Best Laid Plans

We're heading out on our summer road trip late this afternoon.  As always it's been a flurry of laundry, packing and cleaning.  I love coming home to a clean house. However not all is smooth sailing. 

Yesterday Tristan went to bed early with a fever, sore throat and a puke bucket because his tummy hurt.  Thankfully we had no middle of the night clean-up calls and I'm hopeful he'll wake up this morning feeling great.  Then last night as I was watching the results show of So You Think You Can Dance I started feeling itchy.  A little behind my knee, my arm, behind my other knee, my stomach, my thighs, back to my knee, back to my stomach back to my arm, other arm, top of my foot, knee, stomach, thighs, thighs, stomach, knee, other knee, stomach.  When I finally looked I saw that I had been scratching at a raised red blotchy rash.  I took some Benadryl, went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night with itchy palms and feet.  Definition of insanity!

After a terrible sleep I woke up very groggy this morning and feeling panicky about the length of our day.  We won't be getting into our half-way point hotel until about 2am tonight and I'm supposed to be all rested up so I can do some of the driving and Hugh can get some sleep after working all day.  As I was getting out of bed I did a sort of body inventory.  My thighs, where the rash was worst, felt sunburned, my eyes were puffy, my head achy and as I stumbled into the bathroom trying to open my eyes I realized one of them wasn't opening.  I looked in the mirror and said, "AAHHHH!" out loud.   It was like that scene from the movie Hitch when Will Smith has that allergic reaction and his eye swells up like a balloon.  I don't know if I'm having an allergic reaction or pink eye or what but I'm still a bit itchy, Ava said my eye looks like vampire eyes and Tristan just came down the stairs burning up with fever.  Good thing I cleaned and packed yesterday since it looks like I'll be spending my time today at the doctor's.

The middle of an emergency is perhaps not the best time to come up with an Emergency Response Plan

On Saturday Hugh called home from work and said that funnel clouds had been spotted in an area about an hour or so North of the city and was headed our way so could I please tie down our lawn furniture and do our general storm prep of the yard.  Big storms are not new experiences for us, neither are big winds as storms here often produce winds up to 100 km/hr.  We also get extreme storm watches on the Weather Network fairly often though we don't often get the full extent of the forecast.  Sure, I said, no problem.

Before heading to our back deck with the bungee cords we have on hand to keep our deck furniture together I decided to check the Weather Network online to see what it said. It did not say we had a severe thunderstorm warning.  It did not say we had a tornado watch.  In big red letters it said we had a tornado warning for our city and to also expect golf-ball sized hail with the storm.  Underneath that, also in big red letters, was an advisory about putting your family emergency preparedness plan in place.  Uh. Come again?  You said a what now?

That's when I started panicking.

I ran out to our back deck to secure our patio table and chairs together.
Then I saw our Adirondack chairs so I started to run down the stairs towards the lawn thinking I'd better put them under the deck.
Then I remembered about my pots of herbs up on the deck so I did an about-face and ran back up the stairs to get them and take them inside.
When I picked up a pot I saw our trampoline - which had already been tossed by the wind across the yard once this year - so I put the pots down, turned and ran back towards the stairs thinking I better wedge the trampoline in deeper.
Just as I got to the stairs I remembered I had originally come out to bungee our patio chairs to the table so I came to a dead stop and turned again to look for the bungee cords. 

All through this back and forth across my deck I was thinking about the fact that Hugh was at work and that we would be separated when the funnel cloud hit and how was I going to keep the kids calm and were we supposed to sit in the bathtub or in a doorway or was that just for earthquakes and if the power goes out I can use the candles around my tub and should I fill our tub with water?  I don't have emergency water.  I don't have emergency rations.  I'm completely out of rice!  It's on my list for my next Costco run and what am I going to do with the food in our freezer if the power goes out? And how am I going to keep the kids calm?  And isn't there something about hiding near a west wall?  Where is my west wall?  Which way is west???

In the midst of my mental anguish I noticed my neighbour calmly chatting to a friend while grilling chicken on his deck so I yelled over the fence, "Did you hear about the tornado warning?  We're going to have to tie everything down, batten down the hatches, bunker in!

My neighbour and his friend - who turned out to be his step-dad - had both been bush pilots for many years in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.  They had both looked at the system coming in and felt very confident that despite the Weather Network's advisory to put our emergency response plans in place the whole storm was going to miss us completely (which it did).  "But don't worry," our neighbour said.  "If it changes and does come our way I'll give you an hours warning so you can still run around on your deck."

Obviously I can't wait for Breaking Dawn

Have you seen Eclipse yet? 

My sister was visiting last week and we went to see it.  I had heard that it was the best of all the Twilight movies, which I know, isn't saying much.  It was all going along about as well as could be expected with Bella's awkwardness, Edward's painfully embarrassing to watch intensity and Jacob's strange diction (woun'nt, din'nt) until the scene in Edward's bedroom when he looks at Bella with burning eyes and says something like "you'll always be my Bella."  The theatre was dead quiet taking in this supremely romantic moment.

Except.  Well, the cheese.  The absolute cheesiness of the moment and the movie in general was too much and Jane laughed. Out loud.  Which made me laugh.  Out loud.  And then with shaking shoulders we were both pressing our faces into our sweaters and scarves trying not to be murdered by the Twi-hards.  For the rest of the movie anytime Edward pulled out his constipation/agonized face or it got even a little romantic our clothing was back in our mouths.  Jacob's little cartoon-legged run with Bella into the forest nearly did me in and the little scene between Jacob and Edward in the tent pretty much finished me off.  At one point I was literally writhing in my seat.

So we laughed through the movie, laughed while we stumbled out of the theatre looking over our shoulders for a girl in a prom dress or a cast or any other Twilight paraphernalia identifying murderous Twi-hards, laughed most of the way home and then once home read a movie review of Eclipse and laughed some more.

All in all Eclipse = fun.