Last night turned out to be a real strange one. With the temperature still climbing toward triple digits I decided this was not the night for me to prepare supper. Even something on the grill outside would prove to be unbearable for someone who’s hot when it gets over seventy. We rummaged in our coupon envelope and found a gift card (thanks to a Mother’s Day gift from our youngest daughter) for Applebee’s which suited me just fine if we could get there before the usual crowd developed. With the sky beginning to darken I found a parking spot right in front allowing for a quick trip to the car if we were leaving during a rain storm.
As we sat in our window booth enjoying our Mozzarella Stick appetizer we watched as the sky grew darker and darker and the tree in the parking lot began to bend with the breeze. Breeze soon became an understatement as the wind increased along with an ever darkening sky accompanied by lightening and thunder. Even all the TV sets reacted to what started to develop as a real big storm and ceased to function. Strangely enough the building appeared almost soundproof as we watched but did not hear the results of the storm. It was a little surreal enjoying a quiet dinner while watching a torrential downpour and heavy winds outside. In an effort to delay our departure we even went overboard and ordered dessert and coffee.
The rain finally slowed a little, so we ran to the car and made our way home. What a surprise! Sitting in the restaurant and watching during dinner we knew the storm was a heavy one, but our trip home offered another perspective, branches, leaves and rubble everywhere. My immediate concerned was a power shut down at the house and me with no key and an electric door opener which would prove worthless. As we turned into the man road to our house we saw cars turning around from what appeared to be a huge tree across the road. Well, no problem, we turned around and headed in the other direction to take a longer route home. We didn’t get more than 100 yards when we saw cars turning around on this road since another huge tree blocked this route too. Well ok, we’ll go back the way we came and go all around the reservoir and hope that no other trees block our way. Thoughts of having to spend the night in the Holiday Inn Express crossed my mind, but thank heaven we were able to head the rest of the way home with no trees to block us. The other fear of no power at home was unnecessary since the houses we passed had their lights. Now, what will our yard look like, how many of our trees will be down?
As we approached the house we let out a sigh of relief, the yard looked undisturbed. I was just going to let out a cheer until we looked in the pool area. Everything on the south side was gone. Everything went for a swim. A heavy glass table with umbrella was sitting down in the bottom of the pool like a World War 2 submarine. Chairs joined the table. Even chairs that were stacked together in anticipation of the storm had disappeared. They were thrown at least thirty feet and now rested on the bottom of the pool’s deep end. Actually the disappearance of all the furniture struck us funny and kept me from displaying my usual agitation (putting it mildly). I guess thinking about what people have been going through with floods and tornados made this experience something easy to live with although I didn’t particularly relish the thought of retrieval the next morning. Actually couldn’t sleep thinking about it so I was out there at 5:00 am. Pleased to say that retrieval went well with actually not one sear word uttered.
