4

The night's torrential rain turned into a booming thunderstorm.  Joey both loves thunderstorms and is terrified of sudden loud noises.

He loves the idea of them.  In his tradition, the thunderbirds chase the winter monsters away.  I never say the name of the monsters because we're not supposed to say the name between the first snowfall and the first thunderstorm, but I blabber, so I just gave up the name entirely.  They're an enemy in Fallout 76, and that caused a problem with my sinkin' ships loose lips.  We play FO76 as a family fairly regularly when we're not, you know, living in a tent, so it just became too common to say the name.  Now I just call them motherfuckers and Joey, who doesn't swear, calls them creatures. 

 We are lucky to have the wimpy wifi we do here.  Glad to have connection with the world out there.

Anyway.  The storm.  At some point we heard a siren - Aaron heard it first, because Joey was watching a youtuber play Lethal Company.  We all stopped and listened, and Joey hurried to bring up Weather Underground (so weird to me that's the name of the site, right?).  He found no warnings, and the winds were under 20 mph so we tried to relax.

We are right next to the bathrooms, which are the storm shelters.  So not only do we have a VIP bathroom, but a VIP storm shelter.  Which we didn't need to use.

But the two yutes did have a harder time sleeping.  As Nick Valentine, who Joey took his last name from says,  "Hey, chin up. I know the night just got darker, but it won't last forever."

All these video game references are because I am hep.  

Once Joey did manage to fall asleep, with an extra dose of his anxiety meds, he was out for the night.  Aaron, not so much.  We sleep kind of in a U pattern, with me at the connecting part of the U.  Aaron is by my feet.  Joey sleeps a little separated from us - maybe two feet over, because technically the tent divides into three rooms with two flappy curtain walls.  He uses his.  We don't use the other, the tent is small enough

So all night long, Aaron would reach over and shake my foot.  

"Mama.  Not tornado?"

"Nope, bud.  I promise.  We checked.  Try to rest, please."

"Mama.  Is loud."

"I know, bud.  But it's just loud.  Try to rest."

"Mama, no tornado?"

"Nope.  You're safe.  Please try to rest."

PLEASE GUY I AM BEGGING.

When we woke up, Joey and I were laying flat on the ground, our airbeds having decided to fuck off into the ghost world.

Aaron looked like this.

He's cool like that.

So we hauled him up into his chair, and we ate last night's popcorn for breakfast.

"We want to go to the pool," Joey said.

"Yes we do," Aaron agreed firmly.

"Ok, guys, but there's still dark clouds out there."

We opened our windows to get a breeze, to Spaghetti's delight.

that's a cooling breeze window.

After a while the tent started getting a bit overheated, so we moved outside.  Once again the kitties tried to subtly fight for the best position in their crate.  Mostly that looks like slowly coming to lay ON another cat who is sitting where you want to loaf.  Sometimes it looks like Spaghetti growling or Duchess giving her banshee scream.

All of this stops the moment a visitor shows up to see the cats, of course.  Then they are perfectly behaved and charming.

Today the campground is mostly empty, and the only visitor was a blonde lady I swear I have never seen before, but hey, she probably just fell into the brain hole.

"I was thinking about you guys all night," she said.  "I was so worried.  Were you ok?"

"Oh yeah," I said.  "Our tent was perfectly dry all night.  We were fine.  That's very kind of you to think of us."

"My dog was up all night, pacing up and down the RV."

Jealous of the RV status, but I understand.  The kitties settled down as soon as we did last night, but the dogs I've known who have been afraid of storms wouldn't settle so easily.

"I'm Jean, by the way," I tell her, getting up to shake her hand.  I introduce the kids and cats.

"I'm *oops, I forgot her name as soon as she said it*," she said.

The kids and I decide to head down to the general store.  Friends, I have walked back and forth so much I am going to come out of this with kangaroo-strong legs.  Plus I know I felt a tricep forming, pushing that wheelchair with the young man in it.  Also my wrist is riggedy wrecked for some reason.

The clouds were still dark, so I was glad to be in a building.  The tent was cool enough for the kitties, and they appreciated having more space to politic over.

We had grocery money, so I put in a Walmart order - and I included a fan.  The tent does all right, but moving air sounds amazing.

And for some inexplicable reason, I sent our regular fan to live in Rundes' closet.

We puttered around at the general store waiting for our Walmart order to come.  

Aaron tells me he is building Stardew Valley.

"There are no dark clouds," Joey told me solemnly.

"We wanna swimming," Aaron chanted.  "We wanna swimming!"

So I walked back to the campsite and returned with Joey's swimsuit and Aaron's life jacket.

So I walked back to the campsite and cleverly changed into my swimsuit right there and felt proud of myself for having saved myself having to bring my clothes back from the pool.

So I walked back again to get Aaron's trunks.  And I cursed the ground, the sky, and my brain.

Anyway.  Walmart came during all this, and since none of it was perishable, Joey loaded into our wagon while I strolled, and strolled, and strolled.

Into this mild whirlwind, my friend Alan showed up on his motorcycle like the hot boy from the wrong side of the tracks to give me a hatchet, except like me, he is grey haired and comfortable-bodied and just trying to live his life without me singing Leader Of The Pack loudly at him (you're welcome that I did not, Alan).  He could only stay a moment, so he and Aaron chatted about what assholes mosquitos and deerflies are while I was helping Joey stack the wagon with Stuff.

Aaron and Alan have a running joke in which they yell each others names and then end with STEVE!  Last night, Alan had sent a voice message to Aaron that was just a loud mosquito noise ending with STEVE!  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSTEVE!  And Aaron laughed so hard.  So they had a little catching up to do while I put sunscreen on a protesting Aaron and myself.

When I hugged Alan goodbye, he said "No hands!" as I still had too much sunscreen on them, and I immediately forgot his wishes and patted him.  

"Oops!  I'm sorry.  At least you won't sunburn there."

Toward the end of the Great Get Out, I isolated from my friends pretty fiercely.  I'm glad they, like Alan, were still there on the other side.

Then pool time!

AND we finally got Aaron INTO the pool!

Then hauling everything home, putting away our groceries in our amazing under the picnic table and tarp storage area, and time for a small rest.

But I was very overheated, so I ended up laying down covered in yoga towels while Joey kept the fan covered in a wet yoga towel to help me cool down.

By the time I felt better, it was dark, but I was determined to cook.  I had the means to make kindling now, after all.

So I successfully started a fire!  In the firepit!  And I cooked farm-fresh eggs and kinda toasted bread on my cast iron pans, and we had egg sandwiches for dinner.  

Yesssss.

Well, I had an egg sandwich, Joey had eggs, and Aaron had "toast".

Then we watched Doctor Who - 11th, specifically - until bedtime.

Not a terrible day!