Last week we were privileged once again to have my parents and Kirsten come visit. It was a good week in spite of some rather unpleasant things that happened. Actually, some of the unpleasant things ended up making the week that more exciting and even... pleasant!
They got here on Sunday at lunchtime and Event #1 happened that first evening. Well, actually it had
been happening for several days. To make a long story short, Kendall had a wisdom tooth pulled in Kenora on Friday. He was given several drugs. At some point he picked up the hiccups. Bad. (Side effect?) Finally by Sunday afternoon he couldn't take it anymore. His chest was hurting a lot from the hiccups. So he went in to the hospital while the rest of us went fishing. Unfortunately, the I.V. of anti-psychotic medication he had knocked him out and he was rather drugged. (Still with hiccups off and on, I might add, though the anti-psychotic was supposed to help.) So 5 hours later I picked him up and brought him home- rather drunk and unhappy, but not psychotic. We added it up and within 3 days he had 7 drugs pumped into his system. Not good.
Event #2- Close to midnight, Sunday night
Everyone but Kirsten had gone to bed. Kirsten was in the living room reading. I heard a crash outside. It was a big crash. I got up and looked out the window toward the small section of road we can see crossing a small bridge across the bay. I saw nothing in the darkness. Then I heard a yell. I opened the window, but still saw nothing. Kendall (who was drugged) and I discussed whether or not to call 911. The crash sounded something like a dump truck unloading, so for all I knew it could have been a big truck somewhere. And the yell- people goofing off outside somewhere? After watching the neighbors' house near the bridge and seeing no lights turning on, we decided not to call. It must not have been an accident after all.
I turned off the bedroom light and laid down. All of the sudden I was jarred by loud, insistent pounding on the door! "Kendall, get up! Someone's pounding on our door!" We quickly pulled on clothing appropriate for greeting a late-night visitor as I yelled out the bedroom door to Kirsten, "Don't answer the door!" Kendall managed to make it to the door. I grabbed the phone, ready to dial 911 if someone burst in punching Kendall in the face. (You never know. And, he wouldn't have been able to defend himself very well in his drugged state.) Oh, no need to call the police. It
was the police. For all his URGENT pounding on our door, he wasn't in so much of a hurry when he was face to face with us. He wondered if we had heard a crash. Yes! We had! I basically elbowed Kendall out of the way to step up to my place and give my very important report. (Kendall was still drugged, after all.) Even after I gave all my
very important information, the officer still asked only for Kendall's name and date of birth! I did not appreciate that.
Oh right, you're probably wondering what happened with the accident, not just whether or not I got credit for hearing the crash...Turns out, a car had crashed into the guardrail and was sitting on the bridge, totaled, with no driver in sight. They were suspecting he was drunk and were looking for him. Needless to say, Kirsten decided not to sit in the living room with its gaping windows after that. All of the adults were awake then and it took us awhile to get back to sleep wondering if someone was wandering around the bush wounded. (Well, it didn't take Kendall long to go back to sleep- he was drugged. And his hiccups came back while the officer was here. And he heard at work the next night that the guy had been found and was unharmed.)
Event #3- Tuesday morning, 3:30am.
We have a gaping hole in the ground that will soon be the outside entrance into our basement apartment. On Monday Kendall and Dad knocked a huge hole in the concrete basement wall where the door will be. Monday night Kendall goes to work and it rains. A lot. At 3:30 I wake up and hear water SLOSHING in the basement. I'm not talking about a little trickle. I'm talking about A LOT of water SLOSHING. I get up and find Dad wading around the basement trying to squeegee water down the sump hole. A few minutes later I find myself standing in the rain outside shining a spotlight on Dad while he gets a pump working down in the hole. It was exciting. And it sort of cleaned our basement floor. And the pumps that were not working started working. And we were glad that the basement room Mom and Dad were sleeping in was up a step from the rest of the basement. The bedrock has proven its worth already!
Event #4- Sometime Tuesday night
Wednesday morning Kendall found a little surprise in the gaping hole. It was black and white and stunk all over. A poor, shivering little...skunk. Poor guy had fallen in the hole during the night. Well, concrete was coming in less than an hour. No time for a Have-a-Heart trap. Kendall makes the decision to shoot it. (I'm wondering if all the drugs weren't yet completely worn off.) For some dumb and depraved reason, we gather to watch the murder. Moments after being shot, we watch as putrid green liquid spurts out of the poor thing's backside. Hmm... We wait a few moments. What? That doesn't stink so bad. Then it hits us like a physical force. Oh. Yes. It. Does. Stink. The boys missed the physical force of stink by seconds as they ran to get on the bus. Kendall spent a few minutes down in the hole gagging and cleaning up the skunk.
It's true. I panicked just a bit. My house filled up with this horrible smell. Finally, with Kirsten's encouragement, I called an elderly friend who is a trapper. She reassured me that there are worse things. She said it really goes away before too long. Then she said that if you have a musty basement, skunk smell takes the mustiness away! Well, just what I've been looking for! The smell dissipated faster than we thought it would, though after being out of the house for several days this weekend, I
did smell it when I got home. And the woman at the hardware did acknowledge that she smelled it on Kendall and Dad later the same day.
Event #5- Thursday afternoon
Two police officers show up. They want to get an official statement from someone about the accident. Once again, I elbow Kendall out of the way and step up to the plate. (He was happy to be elbowed out of the way and he had been drugged anyway, but I didn't tell the officer that part.) I give my statement and the officer writes much of it down verbatim. I cringe when I offhandedly say, "The dogs were barking like crazy."
Like crazy? Really, Karen? Now I sound like a dork on record. Their last question was whether I would be willing to testify in court. Ooh. Now I kind of wish I had let Kendall give the statement. I've always thought that I am not cut out to testify in court. I would be like, "Well, I
think that's how it was. Well, actually, maybe I heard the yell
before I opened the window. Well, it
kind of sounded like a dump truck, but maybe not." I might pass out just having to take the oath. And it turned out that my very important information that "the dogs were barking like crazy" to the south of the accident site was totally unimportant. My theory was that the guy walked that way after the crash- the officer later told me that he walked the other way so it would appear my very important fact was irrelevant.
Well, I think that was the main excitement for the week. We also went fishing one evening. It turned out to be the most beautiful evening of the rainy week. We took canoes to an unnamed location and caught our limit in an hour or so. Then we took it to shore and ate lots of fish and bannock. Yummy!
Unfortunately, throughout the week, we were also following Kendall's grandma, Beulah's, illness. We knew that she was not doing well. So we were in contact with Leonard and Twila all week. She really took a turn for the worse and Wednesday evening she passed away. We were glad that she was done feeling so awful, but, of course, there's always something so sad about death too. By Thursday, we had made the decision that the boys and I would go along with Kendall to Iowa for the funeral. So my family cut their trip a few hours short and we all headed south Friday around suppertime.
I was a slacker when it came to taking photos of the week. And we were rushing around to leave by the end of the week, so I never copied Kirsten and Mom's photos onto my computer. I'll steal her album and put it on my facebook.
Here are Eli and Evan's first cousins, plus a second cousin and a third cousin.
