We had a comedy of errors of our own when we tried to go to see an evening showing of Much Ado About Nothing at the Miller Outdoor Theater in Hermann Park on Friday.
Several of Donna's book club friends decided to go see a free showing of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing on a Friday night. I was not real keen on the idea for a few reasons: the previous day it was 104° in Houston and the show did not start until 8:30, a half an hour past the girls' bedtime. But since there would several of our friends there and we could leave whenever we needed to, I agreed to go.
As I arrived home, though, I was more encouraged about the event. Pretty strong storms were rolling through Houston, which were cooling things off considerably. They also appeared to be fast-moving and would likely be gone by the time we were at the park. That's what we decided when Kate called to confirm we were still going.
We drove there in very little rain, but we saw pretty impressive lightning ahead of us. As we approached the park, we saw that the lightning was not far away. We stayed in the car a while to monitor the storm. The lightning strikes never got much farther away, but they weren't getting closer either. We decided to go for it and got out of the car just as a few drops hit the windshield.
We found Kate pretty readily. She saved us some nice spots on the "chair" side of the hill, so we setup there. We felt a drop now and then, but it wasn't unpleasant. The girls enjoyed watching the activity of all the people. The previous day's heat and the threatening weather really kept the crowds down, too!
It wasn't long before Elena wandered into an ant pile. Now where I'm from (Delaware) ants are no big deal. In Houston, though, ants are venomous carnivores that can skeletonize a cow in 5 minutes. Well, I exaggerated about the cow part, but ants are defintely to be avoided. So within 10 seconds, Elena was crying loudly, and I saw a half dozen ants on her feet. We counted 7 bites. It was obviously quite painful, and she cried about 5 minutes more before she was able to settle down.
It was about then when it started raining. We had no umbrellas, since I didn't think they would do any good with the girls running around. We stood there, deciding if we should let the storm pass or not. It wasn't getting any lighter, so we decided it was not worth it to stay.
In the pouring rain with two soaked 18-month-olds, we gathered up our stuff. There was some protection near the stage where there was covered seating, so that's where we transported everything to get packed up for the walk to the car. The girls were doing OK, considering they were getting heavily rained on, but the blanket Elena was using to comfort herself (still feeling the affects of the ant bites) was sopping wet.
Off we went to the car. As we started to walk through the tree-covered paths, picking the path out with difficulty in the hard rain and darkness (the power to the streetlights was out because of a brief storm-induced power outage), a loud lightning strike warned us not to be among so many trees. We retreated to the cover by the women's restroom for a few minutes.
After no nearer lightning appeared, we started out again to the car. We got to the car fine, but we were all very wet. I turned the A/C on in the car and set the temperature to hot. It felt good.
We did try to salvage the evening, though. Our friends Roy and Teresa had the good sense to wait in the car to see if the rain would pass. We met up with them in the parking lot and from there all went to have ice cream at Dolce & Freddo. We were all cold (except Roy and Teresa who were pleasantly dry), but we enjoyed some nice conversation. The girls were sleepy and tired of being wet and cold, so we did not linger too long.
Once we got home, though, we all felt much better. A change into dry clothes made us feel so much better that we thought maybe the evening wasn't that bad after all. The girls went right to sleep, and so did I.