My musician husband often takes on jobs that have nothing to do with music. And as his wife, I usually somehow end up helping him complete these jobs. He accepted a job to help remodel a cabin about two hours from our house. The main task being painting the outside of the cabin. He first enlists a friend to help and tells me they’ll be able to knock everything out in two days. When they come back home, he tells me they didn’t even get started on the painting. He convinces me that it will be fun for the two of us to go for the weekend and work. It’d be good for us to spend some time together. We drive two hours to drop the kids with their grandparents, drive four hours to the cabin, and cannot paint because it rains the ENTIRE weekend. We drive four hours to get the kids and two hours back home. And by the time we crawl into bed Sunday night, we realized we really didn’t need to spend any time together.
Unfortunately, the cabin still needed to be painted. Yet again, my husband convinces me that it’d be fun to take the family up there for a few days. We could enjoy the serenity of the mountains. So my second week of summer “vacation”, I end up painting a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Monday and Tuesday, he and I paint all day. The kids join in at various times. Usually just long enough for me to have to redo something. We encouraged them to entertain instead (see below). We drive home late Tuesday night because he and I both have meetings the next day. My one hour meeting turned into 7. Sigh. After the meetings, we take the increasingly familiar trek back up the mountain. We arrive at dark. The husband paints until after midnight while the boys and I snooze. One way the husband convinced me that it would be fun was to tell me we’d take some time to do something fun.
Child Labor
We decided to raft the Tuckaseegee. We stopped painting in the early afternoon on Thursday and loaded up to raft. We rented two duckies. My mom had sent me several text messages warning me of the incoming storms but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be as bad where we were at. I even called my dad to see what he thought. All clear. The staff at the rental company even showed us the radar. Well, apparently, the husband and I are not trained at reading a radar. We hadn’t been in the water 5 minutes before it started to rain. But it wasn’t pouring. It was just a steady rain. Not that bad. Just paddling down the river with the family. Today’s going to be a good day. We hit a few rapids. Fun. I was going to have fun. Who cares if it is raining just a little. And then…the flood gates opened.
It started to pour and I mean pour. And in the words of my screaming 6 year old that was riding in my duckie, “Momma, it feels like nails!”. It was raining so hard that I couldn’t keep my eyes open to see where we were going and it was very difficult to catch my breath. And of course, there was thunder and lightening. And little did I know, the “big” rapids were fast approaching. I kept seeing all these signs but I couldn’t make out what they said. I pass my husband and other son in their duckie. They were stuck on a rock which probably wasn’t a bad place to be in all that mess. My duckie, on the other hand, was heading straight for the biggest rapids of the entire run and I couldn’t see a thing! And not to mention, I always prefer my husband go first so he can scope out the best route and then I just simply follow. So now, not only am I leading but I am leading blindly with a screaming kid in the front in the middle of a thunderstorm! After feeling sorry for myself for about 3 seconds (any longer and we would have been in the water, out of the boat), I put on my big girl panties and nailed those rapids. My husband and the other kid were close behind. He had spotted a place to beach the duckies. Of course I’m in the middle of the river and had quite a difficult time getting our duckie to the side in the pouring rain and wind but finally made it. And when I get out of the raft , I see my two boys heading up to some stranger’s house. I yell for them to wait on me! We run underneath the porch and wait on Dad to get the duckies out of the water. The kind people that were staying at this cabin invited us on the porch and brought my shivering boys towels. As soon as we got on the porch, it started to hail. Thank goodness we were not stuck in that! Turns out the people that were staying at the cabin were from the town we live in. Thankful for good neighbors!
After sitting on the porch for about 10-15 minutes waiting on the storm to pass, the rain started to slow and we decided it’d be safe to finish our trip down the river. We hop in our duckies and all seems to be clearing up. And it did for about 20 minutes. The boys were still a little traumatized so they kept going back and forth between, “this is fun!” and “is it over yet?”. We finally see where we to get out. The guy is standing there waiting on us. He looked a bit relieved we were okay. And when we’re about 10 yards from getting out of the river, the skies open up again. In the pouring rain, the boys and I run to the truck for shelter. While the husband helps tie on the duckies, I sigh a big sigh of relief once in the truck safe with the boys. What I didn’t realize is that I would be much more terrified on the way back to our car because the college kid didn’t slow down at all in the hellacious storm! I kept thinking, we made it through the horrible storms on the river, now we’re all going to die because this kid won’t slow down (or turn on the flipping defrost so he could see out the windshield)!! Geez, I was so relieved when we pulled in the parking lot safely.
By the time we get back to the cabin, we look (and feel) like wet rats just washed ashore. And it is still rainy so we forego painting. Friday, the husband lets me sleep in while he paints. We have to leave by 2 to get home for my nephew’s birthday party. And FINALLY, the first coat is complete!
As I type this, I’m waiting on the musician husband to get home (he was up at 5:30 to mow) so we can take the familiar roads up to the cabin that I’m beginning to think is my second home. Oh, and did I mention the cabin is unfurnished. Working vacations. Love/Hate kind of thing.
Red Fern Teacher 