Sunday, August 8, 2010

Here come the Rohde's... destroyer of worlds...

Here come the Rohde’s… destroyer of worlds…

Ok, so maybe not the WHOLE world... yet. But we're working on it, one house at a time!

We have a standing invitation to "camp out" whenever we like at a friend's house. He is a guy who's been like a second father to Mike. He has a big house, a big yard, and a fire pit in the back. There is also a stream nearby. It has all the things we look for in a campout spot, with bonuses like actual cooking facilities and beds for the babies... AND showers in the morning!

So we finally took him up on the offer this weekend. Then the weather forecast was for rain overnight. So we set up camp indoors.

That night Charlie and I stayed up late (as usual). I got thirsty and went out to the second fridge in the garage. I remembered that they usually have ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. I opened it and, sure enough, they were there, but it looked like they’d been there for a long time. A really, really long time. So… no. I grabbed a drink and went back to the kitchen with Charlie. About an hour after that, the power went off. No problem. I saw the emergency lanterns in the pantry and grabbed one of those. We played a bit longer, then finally got off to bed around 1am.

Next morning I wake to sounds in the kitchen and smells of pancakes. Our friend had cooked us breakfast! It was so sweet of him. I came up and got breakfast along with everyone else. It was wonderful, and when we’d all had enough our friend finally sat to eat and I began cleaning.

Since we were all distracted our oldest thought he’d sneak out to the garage for yet another soda. Mike caught him, and came back in aghast. He announced in any angry, upset tone that the freezer had been left open, and everything had thawed so “I hope you wanted to have meat tonight”. He said he was so sorry, because he was sure one of the kids must’ve done it. He then went out to get to work cleaning up the mess. M2 came with him, and then came back in to ask for a bucket. Then Mike came in to get a rag.

I thought back to last night and said to Mike that I felt it was probably me. I had been out to the garage after everyone else. It was most likely me that had done the damage. And it might've been ok, but the power had been out for HOURS last night.

Mike cleaned it up while I apologized. I was mentally tallying the damage costs I had caused. How much money would it take to replace all the meat and other stuff they’d had in that freezer? $50? $100? More?

I started to apologize to our friend, but he cut me off saying it was probably something that just fell keeping the freezer from shutting properly. He claimed some of that food was too old and needed to be thrown out anyway… plus he was getting his freezer cleaned out for free.

We stayed for lunch then packed up to go. Just before we left he asked us to come again. I wondered how he could say that with a straight face…

THEN THAT NIGHT...

From that adventure we went to another friend's house. We'd had them over a few times, and it was exciting to get to see their house. They'd made us a really nice dinner. N kept hitting, following, and otherwise annoying their son who is 7 and autistic. N was basically just driving him right to the edge. I had to keep grabbing N and apologizing to her son.

J tried to kill the fish and flood their house by banging on the fishtank. We foiled him in that.

Then, right as it was time to leave, I went where the adults were discussing expanding the driveway to tell them, and their son came out saying “He hit me!” I told him I’d be right there. I hurried in only to find that something had been spilled on the couch and NEW carpet . Root beer. Aw, Crap. I went back out to ask our friend for something to clean the couch and carpet with.

She came in gave me the stuff, and I was able to get it out of the carpet… but I’m not sure if I got it all out of the couch.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get invited back there either.

And after reading this I'm sure we won't be getting any invites anywhere. Ever.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Newren Egbert said...

You can come to my house!

Elona R said...

Thank you Liza. I do love you so! And you can come to my house anytime too.