Total Eclipse of the Heart
Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never give a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.
We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:
At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.
It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:
