Sunday, July 1: Day Two Without Power

The predicted strong winds to drive away the heat didn't materialize on Saturday night, which meant we were starting from a higher temperature in the morning. We had decided not to even attempt to find out if there was church: the idea of six sticky, stinky Lykoshes driving an hour round trip to find either that there was church or that church had been transformed to a community support center ... we were happier to stay home.

A neighbor stopped by in the morning to make sure we were doing okay. She has a generator, so if we need water, we can go there. She said she was hearing reports of outages for four or five days. She had been driving home when the storm struck. On our road, she had a tree come down in front of her, and another behind her. Her car ended up in a ditch, but she was spared.

We had hoped for cooler weather. The car said 98 at 9:30pm Saturday night, and 96 at 11:30am Sunday morning. It remains hot.

I made mushroom barley soup for lunch. I had written in the cookbook, "Unbelievably good." I had stepped away for a few minutes and returned to find that the words "Or bad" had been added below. That rascally Jadon with a funny sense of humor!

Phil heard that electricity to the state isn't expect to be restored until Friday night. We sit in front of the oscillating fan in the motor home, take little breaks in the cool car air conditioner, watch movies, read books, try not to think about how sweaty we are. Phil has taken the dogs and any people who want to go down to the creek in the truck. To sit in a few inches of water, watch the crawdads and minnows, soap up and rinse off (not necessarily to get clean, since the red clay muck on the bottom stirs up with any motion, but just to get rid of the sweat): what a pleasure. Phil took the creek experience to the next level, as Joe told me: "Daddy combed his chin, to get rid of the pricklies" (translated: Daddy shaved to get rid of his whiskers).

I watched a movie with the boys titled Metamorphosis. Although it was about butterflies, I know that bees also metamorphose. To go from a little caterpillar (or larva, in the case of bees), to enter a chrysalis (or cover the hexagonal cell), and emerge later as a winged insect with proboscis and compound eyes: that's really crazy. The cells of the first actually break down into a sort of genetic soup, which recombines to create a more advanced creature. Amazing.