Kentucky cabin catastrophe

I am morphing into Clark Griswold

Ok, so I had the best of intentions. This week I had off from work, I fully anticipated getting a ton of work done, including some quality material for all of you. After all, this was the final week we are running the subscription special in an attempt to grow the ministry and all we’re doing here with The Memo, so I wanted to write some quality, thoughtful articles and record a neat video to make it more enticing for all of you to consider.

I had planned a few quiet days with the family at a cabin in Kentucky where we’d play some games, do a few activities, and have a significant amount of down time where I could think and write and record.

It didn’t happen.

In fact, it didn’t come close to happening. I got absolutely NOTHING done work-wise, which would be okay if I felt like I had productive family time in its place. But I’m not sure about that either. I wrote the full explanation of the Kentucky Catastrophe in an article for Not the Bee. Very seldom do I share as a Memo what I write for NtB, but I’m making an exception for two reasons.

1. There is a point to this story that can maybe help you.

2. I’m out of time this week to write something else productive.

If nothing else, you can enjoy the saga of what just unfolded in my life the last few days, but if you do, please do read to the end. There’s more to this than just laughing at my misery. So here we go…

About a month before Christmas I decided to pull the trigger on reserving a cabin at Red River Gorge in Kentucky. It was driving distance, and we’d never done a cabin before. It had trails, a hot tub, some cool underground cave activities nearby (always at a steady 55 degrees summer or winter), and even the possibility of ziplining if it was warm enough. And as an added bonus for the kids and my wife, I got the pet-friendly cabin so we could take our 2-year-old dog with us. They all love him and hate boarding him when we take trips. I tolerate him because I have to.

We got there much later on Monday night after icy roads caused us to have to drive very slowly through the tight mountain curves. Our keycode did not work for the front door lock, but I managed to gain access regardless (don’t ask questions). Once everyone was settled inside, I turned the fireplace on, grabbed my computer to crank out a Not the Bee column for the next day. That’s when I noticed the internet was down. We were too late to call the office for help, so I shut the computer and went to bed.

The next morning my wife and I awoke to one of our daughters telling us she had just “destroyed the toilet” but couldn’t get it to flush. I told her I would take care of it after I ran through the shower. About a minute later I realized why her bathroom had become a biohazard waste dump – we had no running water. I called the cabin rental office and they confirmed the entire county was shut down because of a broken water main but that we’d be back up and running by noon. We headed out for the day, feeling gross, but confident that we’d just gotten through our one snafu for the trip.

This was our quaint little shack from Satan:

Don’t be fooled by the sweet, innocent sunflowers

About 8 pm we got back, dirty, cold, and hungry. Jen was going to start supper while I worked on the toilet and the kids took their showers. We still had no water. Ten minutes later my eldest daughter began having some kind of allergic reaction – to what, we don’t know. With no cell reception, I hopped on my computer to figure out the closest emergency room should we need it. No internet.

Rather than wait to see if she blew up into a modern-day Violet from Willy Wonka, we threw some clothes in a suitcase and headed out the door. An hour later we were at a Days Inn roadside motel somewhere in Off The Grid, Kentucky. A random Benedryl pill we had in the vehicle had slowed the reaction and we got her through a shower. By 3 am we were all in bed. That includes the stupid dog that we had to pay an extra $100 for – just so he could go ballistic at 6 am when other travelers were getting up and heading out of their rooms for the day. No one could get back to sleep. Days Inn had run out of continental breakfast at the end of last week and hadn’t replenished, but luckily there was a nearby gas station that had a Honey Bun for each kid. 

We got back to the hotel to find there was still no water, but sewage had started to back up in the pipes. I called the office to tell them we were leaving a day early, and they said just to be sure that I logged on and filled out the proper forms before departing. As the family loaded the vehicle, I grabbed my computer to follow instructions. No internet.

Laughing to myself (what else can you do?), I grabbed my bag and headed towards the car. And as if the universe wanted to give me just one last punch, somewhere between the cabin and the vehicle door I managed to step in the feces of our stupid dog.

Here’s Gus, the mutt:

Ordinarily I’d feel bad for a dog that kids force into human clothes like this, but not Gus.

Now, I wish I could tell you that I kept my good humor through the whole disaster, but I didn’t. The stress got to me, I let the frustrations provoke my temper a time or two, and I had some pretty choice words I wanted to put in an email to the people who had taken my money for this vacation from you-know-where. Luckily for them I had no internet or cell reception to be able to do so.

But the moment I returned to civilization and got on my computer to start catching up on all my work, I opened an email from an old friend who was diagnosed with some severe, potentially life-threatening medical issues he had suddenly incurred. He’d spent three days begging doctors to put him in a coma so he could avoid the pain, until they could figure out what he was dealing with.

And just like that, a broken water main and spotty cell service didn’t seem like such a big deal. Frustrations are real and stress is legitimate; but life is a gift, and perspective makes all the difference in the world.

So again, I meant for this week to be a big final push to entice you all to join our growing community of believers wanting to set ourselves apart by learning to live and act and respond like Jesus when the culture around us is falling apart. Each week I send that community a Memo that addresses some cultural issue and responds in a Biblical way, a video lesson (with an audio-only and a transcript version) to offer a new perspective on some piece of popular video or commentary in the news, and a short Bible teaching clip. We also do sporadic Q&A’s and I’m cooking up something that I hope will be real perk later this year.

Through January 1st, the standard $100 per year cost is marked down to $75. Would love it if you’d join, even if it’s out of pity for the Week from Hades that the Hecks just endured. For now, I’m going to go shower. Happy New Year, everyone.