I'm a survivor!

I survived a holiday weekend.

You might be thinking this is a snarky comment geared toward my b-i-l and family; but I assure you, it is not.

They were fantastic. It was great to see my niece again. It's been two years. She's 13 now and looks 16. They need to keep her locked in a room with blacked out windows. Our families get along well, even though we're vastly different. We had a great time.

Until Saturday afternoon.

No. I didn't survive my family. My family and I survived Mother Nature.

We got up early and drove the hour and a half to Lake Ouachita where my parents have a lakehouse and a party barge at our disposal. It was a beautiful day. Sun was shining and a breeze was blowing. Perfect for working on my tan.

About 1:00 we see some clouds building to the west of us. (Okay, I was told they were to our west. Frankly, they looked like they were directly in front of us to me...)
My dad calls and tells us not to worry, the storms were going North of us...we would be fine. We get the kids out of the water as the lightning show begins about ten miles away. The breeze turns to gusting winds, and we have to hustle to tie the boats up better.

But we decide to wait it out because they were clearly going North. (or, if you're me, they were going to the right of us.)


Until a Low Pressure system moved in.



It was bizarre. I practically grew up on the lake and I'm a pretty good judge of when to pack it up and get moving. I did suggest we might want to think about leaving, but when Daddy called and said "Don't worry." we carried on.

Bad idea.

The waves on the lake shifted and we realized that big, ugly storm system was being pushed right back toward us. Lightning was streaking to the ground and icy rain pelted us like darts. At this point, we had to try to wait out the storm, there was no way the party barge could withstand the winds and rains.

After about 45 minutes of terrifying weather, it calmed. Of course, the storm was headed directly toward our harbor, but since we were traveling via pontoon (aka the snail boat) we would just follow the storm in. Right?

Wrong.


The storm stalled over the lake so we had to drive directly through the belly of the beast. My husband, Captain Fishdog, managed beautifully.

It was pretty exciting. And scary. At one point I thought it was sleeting, the rain was so cold and hard. It actually felt good when we'd hit a big wave in the lake and we'd get sprayed with the ultra warm lake water.

We ended up beating the storm to the harbor. It was bizarre. I guess it just hung out over the lake about 2 miles from the marina. We pulled into the dock and warned several families who were loading up their boats not to go out there, but they didn't listen. Methinks they regretted that choice about twenty minutes later.