I like Columbus

Like most of the other Columbus bloggers I know (and some I don’t know), I spent part of my weekend at Comfest listening to good music, admiring painted breasts, and drinking giant cups of beer. I had a moms-only night on Friday with Dawn and Kristen, and every time a young lady walked by with pair of uncovered breasts that were sitting up high where God put them, without the aid of any industrial-strength materials, the 3 of us couldn’t help but shake our heads and say, “Enjoy them while you can! They won’t always be like that,” and then we’d lament the fact that we didn’t appreciate our bodies back when we were young and perky, and now we’re stuck having to appreciate them for stupid reasons, like creating life and sustaining life and all that bullshit. Bitter.

We also found a perfect spot to sit and eat, and then we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave the table because it was such a great spot for people watching. It was fun for me to see people that we see at the library, the pool, the grocery store, the farmer’s market, and everywhere else we go around here. It made this big (to me) city feel like such a small town. That might be why I like the Clintonville area of Columbus so much. It has big-city convenience with a small-town feel. A small town where people don’t freak out if you carry your baby in a sling or homeschool or homebirth or breastfeed a toddler. I love that about this place.

On Saturday, we went back to Comfest as a family just in time to see Kristen’s kids do their Grimaldi circus performance for 2 minutes until it got cut short because of the major thunderstorm that was on its way. It wasn’t raining when we took off, but by the time we were about 300 yards away from our van, the downpour was heavy, the wind was pushing us around and we dove for cover in a food tent near the North Market. The wind was rocking that tent back and forth in a very menacing way. I realized then that I only think thunderstorms are cool when I’m safely indoors. I was extremely uncomfortable with the amount of lightening, rain, and wind. My kids and my niece were all scared shitless, but they were playing it cool in front of each other. I was grateful for that because the cherry on top would have been desperate, “I wanna go hooome!” whining and that would have sent me over the edge. Bryan kept saying, “Let’s just run for the van!” But I wasn’t about to listen to him because he drove through Chesaning’s great tornado of ’98 (Or was it ’97?) all the while thinking, “Hm, that’s quite a lot of horizontal rain.” He didn’t know there was a tornado going on, but he was about a mile away from a barn that got destroyed by it. I didn’t think he could get that lucky twice, so we stayed put. Until the short man in the official uniform poked his head in the tent and told us there was now a tornado warning and that we all needed to find a building to get into. At that point, I looked at the kids with an isn’t-this-quite-an-adventure smile plastered across my face and told them, “Don’t worry, the North Market is right there and it’s a huge brick building. We’ll be fine. Isn’t this exciting? RUN!!!!” We ran into the North Market (It’s important to note here that Riley and Liberty almost got backed over by a police cruiser during this run. I had to verbally assault the cop. It’s not like he had his sirens on. I totally would have sued.) So we ran again with Bryan still saying, “I think we should just drive home,” and me saying, “You are a retard and if you keep it up I’m going to get all hysterical in front of the children. I’m trying to act like it’s an adventure, but I’ve already peed my pants from fear. You don’t know that, though, because we’re in the middle of a raining-ass tornado that has washed my pee away so shut up about driving home. We’re never going to get home. We’re all going to die and our home has probably already been destroyed by the tornado anyway!”

We waited inside the North Market for a bit and then people were saying, “I didn’t hear the sirens,” but my niece and I thought we did hear the sirens. I didn’t care one way or another because those stupid sirens were broken last week and they wouldn’t shut off after our tornado warnings were over, so how did I know they weren’t broken and wouldn’t turn on this week? You can’t trust technology! Except when it’s Dawn using her handy-dandy computer to tell us the weather. Yes, it finally occurred to us that we could call Dawn and she would tell us what to do. She told us that Short Guy was lying to us and told us we were safe to get the f*ck out of there, so we did. And then it turned out to be fun. We had our own little community festival with cozy, dry jammies, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, candy, chips, and card games. Best. Comfest. Ever.