Costume Party

Only our friend JJ would want to host a costume party in the middle of January in Nebraska. Since she is a fairly new Nebraskan, she has no clue how quickly the weather can change from reasonably bad to really ugly!

JJ and husband have a home on a lake near the Platte River about 18 miles from Omaha....it's a nice drive and since its fairly "woodsy' we usually see a few animals....deer, pheasants, raccoons, and the occasional turkey. But, its somewhat isolated.... many of the owners only are there in the summer so most of the neighboring homes were closed for the winter.

The party was so much fun....bunch of old friends dressing up. I went as a 1960 hippie....I had made a wig out of dyed cotton balls glued on a cap made out of a piece of panty hose. Actually, it looked pretty good. My husband went as an organ grinder, complete with monkey.

It was lightly snowing when we left home but by the time the party was over.....we were in the midst of a blizzard. It must have been hiding somewhere in outstate Nebraska and arrived here faster than expected, because the local weather forecast didn't say anything about having a major snowstorm!

JJ didn't want any one to try to get back to Omaha, so we had a senior slumber party. 8 couples managed to sleep on couches, floors or whereever they could. I won't say that we were comfortable, but it was adventurous. Since we didn't plan on staying overnight, we all slept in our costumes.

I woke up to the sounds of what I thought was gunfire....."hey, this is a game preservation area...no hunting allowed".....but I was wrong. What I was hearing was the sound of tree sap freezing and breaking branches....the temp had really dropped, nearly two feet of snow had fallen AND no electricity.

B-U-M-M-E-R big time! no hot coffee, no bacon and eggs...just cold cereal, chips and dip and whatever was left over from the party.

Getting back to the main road was very tricky....one of the guys had a pickup truck and he blazed the way for us and we all followed each other....a caravan consisting of a hippie, organ grinder, Arab, little black monster, male nurse and surgical team, a couple of "ladies-of-the-street", an overage cheerleader, and members of the "Village People" (yes they did a great rendition of "YMCA").

We all arrived home safely only to find that our own homes were without electicity, downed trees littered the streets, and people were in their yards wondering "what in the heck happened!"

Menards, Lowes, K-Mart and another other stores that sold chain saws sold out within a day. We'd get calls from friends.."hey, I was just at Menards, they got in a new shipment of chain saws!"....or "don't bother going to Lowes, they're sold out".