Y3W

Wednesday at 4:00, C and I innocently left the apartment for our weekly trip to the Farmer's Market in our town. It had been a bright, sunny day all day. Clearly, I neglected to check the weather report for the day. Guess I got used to the Phoenix life...sunny all day, storms only after dark. As we left the house, a bit of drizzle started, but nothing of concern. The sky was still clear. Two minutes down the road (out of our 5 minute trip to the market), rain began pouring down.

Side story: Every "Market Wednesday" Caleb and I share "ice cream" aka Mango sorbet. Last week I didn't get him any because he had been a nightmare with not napping (more on that in another post). This week, before his nap, I reminded him that we'd go to the market and get some ice cream if he napped well. When he woke up from nap, we again talked about going to the market for ice cream. Ok, back to the main story...

So as the rain is pouring down, I turn down a side street toward McDonalds thinking I'll just take him there for ice cream instead of getting caught out in the rain at the outdoor market. Of course, I stupidly ask him if that'll be ok. He says, "Ride stroller, get ice cream." Meaning: I want to go to the market. So I think, "It's just a little bit of rain. We're used to Arizona where we don't get rain during the day. Caleb will think it's fun to get a little wet."

So we turn around and drive another 3 minutes down the road arriving at the market. Get out of the car, get the stroller out of the trunk, get Caleb into the stroller, close the door. We walk up to the first stand where I was planning to get some corn for that night's dinner. Cue the skies to open up with thunder and lightening right on top of one another and huge gusts of wind. As we're standing there waiting to pay for our corn, a gust of wind comes and lifts the vendor's tent off the ground as the bungee cord holding it to the pavement snaps off right next to Caleb's stroller. He immediately started crying so I pulled him out of the stroller, paid for my corn, and walked as fast as I could to the car dragging the stroller behind us. I thought for sure we were going to be struck by lightening. By the time we got to our car, only a few yards away, we were soaked to the bone. We sat in the car for a minute waiting for the rain to let up and it slowed enough in that short time that we were able to head home. We decided to take roads through the neighborhoods to get home instead of going on the main streets thinking it would be faster. On our drive we saw a tree laying on top of a car and tree limbs the size of small trees. Then we saw this:

A giant tree laying across the road. As we made our way home through the town we found that traffic lights were out all over town. Another tree was down completely across the ONLY road leading to our apartment complex. Fortunately some construction guys were in the area and they quickly brought out their chain saw and bulldozer-like thing and got the tree out of the way. Caleb even realized how bad the storm had been when he said from the back seat, "We can get ice cream another time." By the time we got back to our apartment a mere 30 minutes after we left the storm was over, but the damage was immense. We discovered that we had lost power like 56,000 other customers from our power company. Even two days later, the cleanup continues, and we are still without power. The power company estimates that it'll return by Sunday morning. Thank goodness we have family who lives 3.5 hours away. We are enjoying all the comforts of home once again this weekend. It's been fabulous being able to eat a home cooked meal, take a hot shower, have lights turn on when I flip a switch, sitting in the air conditioning when it is 90 degrees outside with 100% humidity. I'm looking forward to a nice weekend enjoying these things and hope to return to an apartment with power on Sunday afternoon.

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