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The pile is still on top of my monitor...it's kind of leaning over, like it will fall any minute.
I used to live in a city in Germany that had a leaning tower. The story goes that way back when the tower was being built, there was a drought and so wine instead of water was used to mix the mortar being used to build the tower, and therefore the mortar wasn't as strong as it should be...
It was quite fun to tour the tower. You would climb and climb stairs to get to the top, and by the time you got up there the tilt was very pronounced and it was very hard to stand up!
I still miss the little city where I spent part of my growing up years. I don't know if I'll ever get to go back there. We lived by a vineyard, where we used to ride our bikes in the summer, and go sledding in the winter. I would go to school in the winter and, riding in the bus across the new bridge over the Main River, see great sheets of it frozen...when we came back to Louisville in 1986 the Ohio River was so huge, I've never seen it frozen over....
We used to pick plums from our neighbor's yards, and would then get promptly scolded by old German women. We had schnitzel for dinner almost every night...it was a treat when our parents would take us out to eat and we could get hamburgers and fries...or pommes frites as we called them there. An even bigger treat was the occasional trip to the big city of Wurzburg, where we could go to McDonald's!
I came back to the States when I was almost thirteen years old...having spent my crucial growing up years in a different country, it was major culture shock!
to be continued...
This may sound redundant, but the weather keeps happening:
My daughter's softball game was at 6:30 this evening, about 45 minutes away in another county. When it was over, we decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants down on the river for dinner. My grandparents decided to go straight home...my boyfriend didn't go to the game because he had to work late...my daughter and I had gone with my mom since I try not to drive anymore, ever (and it's a good thing I wasn't driving for this...).
We take the turn onto River Road, happily oblivious to the darkening sky, admiring the trees and the water and the houses and the boats, going on our way...
And then, the wind picks up and I see leaves and twigs flying around in the air above us. Immediately, I knew.
We kept our calm for a few seconds, kept driving, until suddenly we were in a bad remake of the movie "Twister", only we would have to replace the tornadoes with a hurricane.
The problems with driving on River Road in bad weather are:
1. The road is, amazingly enough, right next to the really, really big Ohio River.
2. It is lined with lots of trees.
3. There are no commercial businesses at which to stop for help. It's mainly private property, boat docks, and country clubs.
These things are not necessarily bad things, unless you happen to be driving along it when the worst storm in 30 years comes out of nowhere, and there you are.
The wind slammed into us at 80 miles per hour, thanks to the fact that it was coming down from Indiana and had picked up speed going across the really big river. The trees bent sideways and, I swear, the river looked like the pictures you see of beaches during hurricanes...it was blowing in waves over the docks.
The trees started falling down. Remember the movie "Twister"? We reenacted it in the car. My mom driving, me yelling "Left!", "Right!", "Tree!"...and my mom even said at one point, completely without irony and with total fear, "We have to get offthis road."
I really thought, for a while there, that we were not going to make it home. It's probably moved to the top of the list of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced. Especially because my daughter was in the car...I just knew we were going to either get crushed by a tree, or be blown off the road.
And we were just lucky, because some cars were.
When we were both completely panicked and sure we were going to die because we didn't know where to go to get away from the falling trees, I remembered to call my boyfriend, because he knows everything (well, about that area at least, since he works down there)...he directed me to the expressway, where the rain was falling in sheets and we couldn't see and the leaves and twigs were still flying through the air and everyone else on the road had pulled over under the overpasses...except us, of course, because after the terrifying experience we had on River Road, we were in complete panic, running mode.
When we finally made it home, every channel was covering the unexpected fury of this storm. The final tallies:
Hundreds and hundreds of trees down, including over 100 down on River Road itself, and over 100,000 people in the area without power, the worst outage since the F5 tornado of 1974.
All I could do when we got safely inside the house was cling to my daughter and thank God that we were alive, with the images in my head of all those falling trees that managed to miss us.
Note: It's starting to rain again and I see lightning through the window, so I guess I'll shut down for the night while I still have power.
Life tastes better, right now...
My daughter's first day of summer was today...I love how the first day of her summer, and my summer, is when school is out...the summer solstice is not for another month!
The weather seemed to know it, also, as it was 90 degrees here, which is unseasonably high, and sooo humid, as befitting living in the Ohio River valley.
A few hundred people around town ran out of gas this week, and it actually wasn't their fault! It seems a local distribution site for a major gas company was selling gas with high levels of sulfur, which messed with people's gas gauges and made them think they had half a tank of gas, right while they sputtered to a stop on the freeway. The gas company has said they will be spending the next few months spending lots of money on fixing people's cars.
Of course, the day the news came out, I had half a tank of gas, and I couldn't remember if I had gotten gas last at the "bad" company or not. It was stressful driving for a while...
I was in the breakroom on the 2nd floor today, and ran into a woman who had been in my class this semester. (She got an A- too, hmmm...). It's amazing we went the whole semester without knowing we both worked for the same company, but we do take several floors in a high rise building so maybe it's more surprising that I ran into her!
Anyway, she asked me if I had done the tuition reimbursement for this semester and last semester. Surprised, I answered "No", as I thought the company only paid for business classes. She just stared at me. "Well", she said, "I'm an English major, and they've been paying for MY classes."
What?!
To make a long story short, I quizzed several people upstairs, and the answer is, "Yes, they would have paid for this"...which made me want to beat my head on the wall for all the money I shelled out for U of L this year, that I really didn't have to...
...but my frustration turned to excitement when I was told that I can still get my money back! Yes! Yes! All I have to do is fill out some forms, along with copies of my grades, and a letter explaining how STUPID I am for not realizing that I should have done this a year ago, and I get my money back!
This means that not only am I going to be able to get my second degree without going broke, but also, if my employer is going to pay for it, I will get a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. They'll most likely be sorry sooner than later that they've hired an eternal student...LOL.
This also highlights what it's like to be me...I'm forever doing stuff, or, should I say, not doing stuff, and paying for it later, unless I somehow get bailed out of it by a miracle of coincidence (if I had not run into this woman, for instance, it never would have crossed my mind that I'd be eligible for this.)
For example, the last time I got a ticket, I put it out of my mind...kept ignoring it...tried not to think about it...until the time came that it was too late to pay it and I had to go to traffic court. So not only was I going to have to pay my ticket, I was going to have to pay court costs on top of it. I meekly went downtown, stood before the judge ready to write my check out for way more than it originally would have been...and the judge dismissed the case! I didn't have to pay anything, no ticket, no court costs!
I usually just passively let life toss me around, and only find out things when it comes to me, and only approach things when I have to. It'll be a struggle to make myself get this paperwork together (no, really), but the $1000 plus that I'll get back is a strong motivator...it'll come in handy toward fixing my car since my car wreck a few months ago (I have a $1000 deductible, don't ask), I've been waiting for money to drop in my lap so I can get my car fixed. See how this works!
We got back from Chicago late last night, and I'm still exhausted. How long does it take to get over a trip like this?
We had dinner in Indianapolis on the way home. The experience there made both my daughter and I feel a lot better about the trip. The two of us sat down at a table alone since her six classmates were sitting with each other, and, as usual, they hadn't left any room for her. We had just been there a couple of seconds, though, before the girls noticed where she was and shoved a bunch of seats together and called her to sit with them.
I was so thankful to see it, and trying hard to get over my resentment of the fact that they could have done that the whole trip, instead of the last day. I had really taken everything a lot worse than my daughter had. She is the eternal optimist and always ready to forgive and forget.
So, my daughter deserted me, and I was stuck eating dinner by myself, but that was okay because she was happy.
Then I hear someone say, "Are you eating alone? Come sit with us!". I look over and it's one of the other mothers from my bus, at a table with her son and his friend.
I had seen and heard this woman, Allison, talking on the bus for the last four days, and she was by far the most intimidating person of all on this trip. Older, beautiful, self-confident, and loud - totally opposite from me.
With trepidation, I sat down with her, and we talked through supper. And to my surprise, she was absolutely approachable and nice. Not only that, but she had a lot of the same concerns that I did about the trip and how the other kids were treating her child. And also the same concerns about not really knowing the other people on the trip, and the same relief that the trip was almost over!
(Anna: I was thinking of you as I was talking to Allison through this dinner, and how right you were. This person wasn't intimidating at all once I talked to her, but very nice and normal. Thank you again!)
As for the last leg of the trip home, Derby Time struck again. I-65 was closed for THUNDER OVER LOUISVILLE, the nation's largest annual fireworks show and the official kickoff of the KY DERBY FESTIVAL. The fireworks show is held over the Ohio River. That's the river we have to cross to get back to Kentucky.
With I-65 closed, we backtrack our way on the Detour to get on I-64, where traffic was at a standstill. So the bus got off the interstate and drove through the back roads to get back on I-64 at mile marker 1, which is the last entrance to the interstate before it crosses the river.
So we get on the Interstate and are soon stuck on the bridge over the Ohio River, which is where we happen to be when the fireworks start.
And that's how we got great seats for the 40-minute fireworks extravaganza, keeping the kids and adults close to the windows, and the conversation on the bus soon limited to "OOOH...AHHH...OOOH...AHHH".
The tour guides insisted that they planned it that way, hour delay and all.
I'll write more on the trip next time, working backwards. I am so happy to be home.
