Staycation Shenanigans: Mastering a Hilariously Unadventurous Spring Break- Recap!

    

    Well, it came and it went. Spring break 2024, you were one for the history books, I’ll tell you that. Last week, I wrote about all the things you could do on spring break if you were staying home and having a chill, unadventurous week. And while I planned for a break that left me border than a housewife on Bravo, that didn’t end up being the case. Let me run you through just some of the things that occurred last week during “Staycation 2024.” 

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” Baroness Maria von Trapp was right;

the beginning is a great place to start, except when it's the start of chaos. For my American Christianity class, I have to sit in on a different religion than the one that I practice and write a paper about it. This isn't a problem except that I have a hard time waking up on Sunday mornings when I’m at school. Be that as it may, I had planned for weeks to do my visit over spring break so that I would have someone to hold me accountable. After much begging, my grandma was the one who agreed to go with me and God bless her soul, that woman didn’t know what she was getting herself into. On the church's website, it said the service started at 10 a.m. and only lasted an hour. Perfect, we’d be in and out. I picked my grandma up and we were on our way. We were both worried about being underdressed or drawing too much attention to ourselves, so we agreed to sit in the back of a nursery room. Little did we know, none of that would matter. We showed up at the tail end of the service that started at 9 a.m. Missed the whole thing. We wandered around the church until someone helped us to our seats where we finished out the service acting like nothing happened. Once that was over, we debated whether or not we were going to stay for the 10:30 service when all of a sudden this woman came up to me. She was a friend of my mom's who recognized us both and sort of explained to us what we had gotten ourselves into. While we’re talking with her, walking into the church are parents and children alike wearing pajamas and sweatpants. Both being Catholic, my grandma and I could not believe our eyes. Long story short we were overdressed, underprepared and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. That was Sunday. 

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with work, doctor appointments and a Columbus Crew match where my crush on goalkeeper Patrick Shulte only grew. With seats in the second row behind the goal, it's safe to say a good 45 minutes of the game were spent just watching him. (Just kidding.) The game was amazing, the weather was perfect and the Crew are moving on to the semi-finals of The Champions Cup. While the days were busy, it wasn’t anything stressful or more chaotic than usual. 

Then Thursday happened. I was scheduled to work pretty much the entire day. As much as I hate my job, there are a few perks that keep me coming back, for example, the amazing discounts. I was excited to get some of my shift out of the way before the doors opened until I walked into the biggest mess I’ve seen in a while. The “go-back” bin was filled to the top and more with clothes from the fitting rooms that weren’t put back before the store closed the previous night. That was it; I was ready to go home. The whole shift felt long as hell. By the time my shift was over, I was so ready to just enjoy a nice quiet night with my family. Spoiler alert: I got anything but that. 

I knew that there were some pretty serious storms rolling into the area but it wasn’t anything I was unfamiliar with. Thunder and lightning, high winds, maybe even some hail; no big deal. Cut to 8:30 p.m. Sirens are wailing outside, winds are whipping against the house, my dad starts rushing everyone into the basement but still I never really felt panicked. Together we sat around the TV watching the meteorologist flash colorful graphics we knew nothing about. Then the lights went out. It was like the world was silent. Until my dog decided to leap onto my dad’s arms like he was Scooby-Doo, burp in his face then run off into the darkness like he was never there. Pretty typical in my house. But then something weird began to happen. The winds began to pick up, hail was beating against the house, this wasn’t like anything I had ever experienced before. This was when I began to panic. I could hear the house moving with the wind and everything outside being thrown around. We were in a freaking tornado.

I always wondered what it was like. I pictured my family being huddled in the basement for hours while waiting for the all-clear. It wasn’t like that at all. As quickly as the storm arrived, it vanished, leaving nothing but ruins in its path. Pictures flooded social media of trees on houses, pieces of my high school's scoreboard in people's backyards and multiple power towers snapped in half like pretzels. That night my brother and I learned a lot about external generators, how to set them up, connect them to a sump pump and more importantly, how freaking loud they are. No one slept that night. Schools were closed the next day with two Olentangy schools sustaining major damages. With no power, we headed out to Menards to grab some essentials because apparently, the Glassburns don’t own a flashlight. Roads were closed at every turn. It was impossible to go anywhere. We’d finally get our power back around 4 o'clock that afternoon, just in time for a shower and some Big Ten basketball. I hope I never have to do that again. 

    

    

    

    All in all, this spring break was a doozy. Ups and downs around every corner. However, I learned a lot of valuable life lessons along the way. More importantly, though, I got some new super cute clothes that I can’t wait to wear. Happy spring break everybody; I hope your week was as thrilling as mine was.

Below are pictures of just some of the aftermath. (After watching the news I am obviously aware of how fortunate we are compared to other areas of Ohio.)

One of six power towers that fell.

The bridge over Alum Creek closed due to power lines that fell into the water and across the road.

A piece of the scoreboard that was found in someone's backyard.

Some schools have a victory bell, my school has a victory bear statue. RIP Obie.

RIP the scoreboard. 

The willow tree blocking our street compared to my 6-foot-tall brother.

The local pizza place that everyone loves after its chimney collapsed.

A neighbor's house with the wall basically just torn off. 

A close-up picture of one of the power towers that ruined the sidewalk.

The baseball and softball fields were left in ruins. If you look close enough you can even see the bleachers that were picked up and thrown through the brick backstop of the baseball field.