A Party to Remember – Humpday Harrumph

About a week ago, Travis and I got to host my nephew Jens, who is battling stage 4 melanoma, his wife Katie, and their two boys, along with my sister Teresa and my brother in law Robert. We held them hostage for five days, hopefully providing a much-needed break from thinking about cancer. During their five days of captivity, Jens turned 37. Teresa and I decided to throw him an old-fashioned Weizeorick party. Since Jens grew up in Denver, he has had few opportunities to experience the thrill, the fear, the overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by too many people. As parties go, the ones I throw are mediocre. Fortunately, my friends Peggy and Colie snuck in at night and decorated the yard, and my friends Pam and Sheila organized a boat parade with signs to go by the house during the party. While that didn’t entirely make up for my mediocrity, it helped.

In the morning, the party was going swell. The largest group went out in the boat with Travis, while another group helped set up tables and chairs at the house. It was a pseudo surprise, since we couldn’t figure out a way to really surprise Jens, since he was staying at my house, and the party was planned for the entire day. The food came at precisely noon (thank you Chipotle), and was ready to go when the boaters returned tired and hungry. When Chipotle says that they will feed 50 people, they are lying. They may feed 50 ravenous gorillas, or maybe 70-80 people. We had a ton of food. We ate, drank, and were merry. Since my sister Jeannie couldn’t decide on a cake, she got three. Works for me.

We decided to postpone the later boat rides because there was supposed to be a little sprinkle, which should have ended at 4:30. Instead, at 4:30, the skies opened up and released buckets of water. We thought we could power through, since we had a 40 foot by 20 foot tent. The wind was pushing the rain so much, we were squished into a 10 x 10 portion of the tent. As we watched the boats rush home in the pelting rain, I was VERY glad to be under a tent, learning where all the leaks were. Eventually, we were relegated to the house, as the rain would not quit. Then, the electricity went out. Normally, this could be a fun part of a party, but my house is on well, and requires an ejection pump to push the waste to the sewer. So, now I had maybe 40 people in my house with no electricity, no water, and no toilets. To top it off, we couldn’t put the leftovers in the fridge or take any food out because we dare not open the fridges. Nipsco (our energy company), which is usually good at communicating during an outage, was strangely quiet.

So, there we were. Nobody wanted to eat or drink because they couldn’t use a toilet. I offered to order pizza because the food had been out too long and was looking a little… worn. We were all looking a little worn. So, slowly the guests trickled out. Except for Tom and Jeanne. They arrived right when the power went out. Very suspicious. Tom had a generator, but it was over an hour away in Illinois. Robert and Tom figured out a way to bypass the box (since both the pump for the well and the ejection pump were hard lined into the box) so they could hook up just those two things to Tom’s portable gas generator. A plan was formed, since I had 16 people sleeping at my house that night, and there was no way to make it without functional toilets. But still, the generator was over an hour away. If I don’t invest in a whole house generator, I am getting a Porta-John with a hand washing station for my next big event. I also need to mention that Jeanne and I killed Tom and Debbie in doubles ping-pong during the outage. We played cards and entertained ourselves, but the party petered out as the need for a toilet increased. Eventually, even Tom and Jeanne left. Tom was going to get his generator and meet me halfway to hand it off. Suspiciously, the power went back on as Tom and Jeanne left. Hmmm.

Honestly, I feel bad for Jens, since the party lacked the usual Weizeorick luster. But, really, have you ever been to a party that loses water, toilets, and electricity? It was one for the books. I was so mentally stressed after the power came on that I left the dishes until the next day (no water means no washing during the outage). We tried to play some more games, this time with lights, but I actually fell asleep during the game.

I hope we made some memories for Jens and his family… maybe some of them were even good memories. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers as you go about your days.