Last Saturday, we were lucky to have our friends, the Zikudas, out for the day. Another Illinois friend, Smokey, made it out for part of the day. It was easy to social distance because we stayed outside the entire day enjoying the weather. It was the perfect day on the lake, with boating, floating, music (provided by Smokey and Travis), boating some more, and eating. I have no pictures of the day because we were too busy enjoying ourselves. This was supposed to be our huge Rock the Dock weekend, but with Covid, we had to cancel, and go with a smaller group.

Our troubles started around dinner time. All the adults were busy prepping, me in the house with sides and setting up the chow line, everyone else outside cleaning and arranging tables. By this time, some local friends, the Stelters, had come for the fireworks and a bite to eat (social distancing appropriate, of course). The sun was going down, people were starting to sit down with food, but there was still food on the grill, when a strange boat pulled up to our dock and people started getting off the boat. I was still busy, so I sent Tessa and Tayden to investigate. The boat people said they knew us and told the kids their name (I still haven’t figured out who they are, so I am not putting it here, out of embarrassment). They were using my next door neighbor’s bathroom before the fireworks. No problem. Any friend of Marcia’s is a friend of mine. I continued with my enjoyable evening. My kids were a bit concerned though. The kids grabbed the boat lift keys as a security precaution on their way back up. Tayden handed the keys to Travis, who was manning the grill, and that was the last time anyone saw the keys. Of course, we didn’t know that yet. 

Sometime after the fireworks, Travis remembered the keys being handed to him and was concerned. After our friends headed home, he began to look in earnest, but it was dark and a little chaotic, so I said we would look in the morning. And we did look in the morning. We looked and looked, bringing out the big magnet to search the shrubs and grass. We spent hours looking. We had a group that wanted to surf and no way to lower the boat into the water. After the unsuccessful search, we tried the emergency bypass, and burnt out a drill…so I hope there isn’t any emergency that would require the bypass. Travis wanted to rerun some wires to get it to work. My exact response was, “honey, if I needed my ovary removed, you’d be my guy! Leave the wiring to the boatlift alone!” At some point in the morning, I left a Sunday morning message to the unfortunate guy who sold us the lift and made our dock. I also left a message at the 800 number that was on the lift. Travis ordered new keys. Guess who got the boat in the water? First, the 800 number called us back and sent us instructions on a different bypass. Then, they dock guy called us back. He had extra keys. I felt bad disrupting his Sunday, but he said my message (I can only imagine) made him laugh out loud. We met at the Walgreens warehouse for the exchange.

As I sat in my car in the vacant Walgreens parking lot, I felt a little conspicuous, like I was waiting for my dealer. He showed up and showed me that he separated the two keys (yes, we had two keys before… that we left connected… so we lost both… smart, I know). He told me to keep them separated. I did just that. And we were back out on the lake by early afternoon. 

I am counting this one as a point for the Jo! At some point, we will discover all six keys together somewhere and wonder where they all had been. That’s just how things work here. Have a great week everyone!