storm

by Kimberly A. Cook             (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Last week was a bit nuts. Came home on Feb. 9th during the Pineapple Express rainstorm at 8 p.m. and found the gusting winds had flattened part of my backyard fence. Oh joy. So while I was out making macrame out of my orange extension cords and using my black and yellow caution tape to secure the kinda upright fence sections from killing someone, it occurred to me that might be an odd thing – that I didn’t have r0pe, but I had Caution tape.

One never knows what supplies are about with a writer in the house. After an hour out in the “Dark and Stormy Night” as Snoopy would write, I came inside, peeled off wet clothes, gave Spec Ops Cat thirty minutes of lap time and hit the sack.

Later in the week on Friday the 13th our Governor resigned, on Saturday we all celebrated Valentine’s Day, Oregon’s 156th and my Mom’s birthday, plus tore apart the damaged fence with help from big elves. A fun time was had by all, assisted by the fact there were not one, but two birthday cakes to eat.

I think cake fixes everything. Except fences, but you don’t care when you have chocolate cake.

Because part of my yard was unsecured, I had to round-up the gnomes, bunnies, flamingoes, turtles, polar bear and frogs. I’ve been the victim of a gnome kidnapping before and the trauma still haunts me. During the big gnome relocation I realized I’ve got a herd of yard art.

Then I got really paranoid and moved the lawn swing inside for safe keeping too. There was one casualty. When I reached to get the mega-hammer from the tool box to break apart the fence with my elf helpers, I hit Gnomeo with my foot and he hit Juliet who fell over and broke in two. Rats!

Now she has to go to the hospital to get fixed. I’m thinking Gorilla Glue and red Duct Tape. We shall see. So what did I do until I can get Juliet to the hospital? I went ahead and trimmed the roses, which is what we do here in Portland Rose Festival land on President’s Day.

Regardless of politics, rain storms, damaged yard art and flat fences, it’s time to trim the roses! But everything is fine here because there are leftover chocolate birthday cupcakes. Life is good!