Just 48 Hours Ago

I am so silly. I started a photo bucket slide show two weeks ago for the blog. Got picture in and was hoping to have it up by the weekend before Christmas and what do you know, I forgot my login and password. I didn't write it down and haven't been able to get into the account. Then we went home for Christmas and now we are in the throws of Onething with 12 people in our basement and I have hardly seen Steven in the last 48 hours. All that to say, I am trying. Just think there will be more pictures in the slide show now.

While you are waiting I thought I would entertain you with some of our holiday home coming folly. We returned home on the 26th due to that fact that Steven is one of the stage managers for Onething and had to start work on the 27th. We arrived in KC about midnight or 1am. unloaded as much as we could and crawled into bed. Around 4am we awoke to the dog restless, Shiloh moving around and no electricity. Yup, it was freezing and really dark. That morning Steven left for his set in the Prayer Room and then on to Bartel Hall, down town KC to work. I got up and looked outside the window to see a scene from a war flick. There were trees down in the streets and in our backyard was colossal damage. Lightning struck our neighbors tree causing it to fall in our other neighbors yard, missing their house by a few feet. This caused the light pole to snap and then the light pole that is right behind our house, loosed by the tension of the tree falling on the previous pole, was leaning up against our fence and electric wires were everywhere in our yard. The entire block that I live on was without power, which meant most of us were without heat. Steven had reported the power outage earlier so I thought that by the end of the day we'd have heat. Not so. Around 1:45pm that afternoon the temp. in my house began to fall and I started to look for a place to go with Shiloh. My friend and neighbor a couple blocks over offered her home to us and so at 3pm on the 27th, with our house now at 59 degrees we moved into her house for how ever long. It was fun minus the fact that we had just got home from visiting and were in need of our own space but I was happy to be warm and with lights.

The next day my back yard was buzzing with a military of electric company men, tree cutters, and cable guys. It was a sight to see. I came home to check the status and begin my preparations for the 12 people that were to come to stay with us that night. I asked a worker if the power would be on that day and he said he hoped so. What! You better hope so buddy. (I didn't say that out loud just FYI) I dawned my headlamp and candles to make the preparations to the guest areas down stairs and to my shock and horror another surprise laid waiting for me. Due to the large amounts of rain and snow that we'd had over the last week or so, and not much sunny weather, the ground around our home decided it couldn't contain any more water. So it shared some with my basement. That is right. Not only was the electric out and we are not sure whether it would return in time, I now have the little Nile in my basement. It was a mess because we had moved an extra mattress onto the floor, which acted like a large kitchen sponge and soaked up water. It was a lesson in patience and finding joy in trials. So my friend and I cleaned up the water, moved the mattress outside to dry off and headed to wal-mart for some chocolate.
(I forgot to mention that on the night of the 27th, as I was pouring myself a cup of tea, I missed the cup and poured boiling hot water on my hand. It really, really hurt. I spent that night sleeping with my hand in a bowl of ice water. Not fun!) Anyways.
I decided to finish getting ready for guest in faith that the lights would flicker on as I was working. At 6pm on the 28th, with no lights, I found my way over to my friends to start making other arrangements for my 12 guest to stay with other people. No small task.
My friend decided that we should get dressed up and go to the Onething conference and figure it out later. So we cleaned up and in an effort to forget all the days troubles we walked out in style. I wanted to swing by my house one last time to see if the lights were on. We turned the corner to my street and I saw my porch light on over the hedges. I was never so relieved. We headed to the conference and afterwards I welcomed my friends into my home, very warm and fully lite up. That night I slept very, very soundly.
That is a narrative of my 48 hour dilemma that was a test of patience and humility. Oh and my hand is fine. I soaked it in ice water all night and in the morning no blisters.