The Rapture

Last night I experienced the most intense storm of my entire life. A microburst hit North Phoenix where I live and it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. Around 11pm last night I was watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and thinking about going to sleep soon since I work super early on the weekends. Just as I'm about to brush my teeth I hear the thunder outside and decided to go peek at the lightning before bed. The lightning was directly over our house and it was quite the show until quite suddenly there was a downpour and intense winds came. I got sprayed by a sheet of rain that came in and could barely see 10 ft in front of me when I see a critter run right in front of me. Since it was so dark I thought it was a cat but when it ran from me I saw its long snout and bushy tail and realized it was a raccoon!

I ran back inside the house to tell my mom that a crazy storm was brewing when the power went out. I had left the front door open and the wind was so powerful it was hard to shut it. Once I did we looked out the window and the whole house began to shake and we thought the windows were going to blow out. It was like the Rapture had come! All you could see outside was a wall of rain and flashes of light with thunder raging all around. I checked the backyard to see if the patio was okay and I saw the CHIMNEY LYING ON THE GROUND! Since we were down one chimney we had a gaping whole in our roof and the wind got inside and blew the hatch to the attic askew. This storm went on for what seemed like hours. In no time the house got swelteringly hot from the AC being off and the humidity made it so stuffy I felt like I couldn't breathe. I tried to go to sleep since I had to be up at 7am but I felt like I was going to suffocate from breathing in the hot damp air (which made me feel pretty anxious). My dad got home around 3am and I was still wide awake. He got on the roof to access the damage and found that the tv antenna had been mangled, many shingles had been striped off the roof and the swamp cooler had been trashed. Such a mess! When he walked around the neighborhood he saw that many trees had been completely uprooted, windows had been shattered and brick fences had been blown out! For the rest of the night all you could hear were police sirens and fire trucks.

I think I managed to get 2 hours of sleep. I had set my phone alarm to wake me up at 7am since our power never came back on. When the light woke me up I thought, "Nah, it's not time to wake up. My alarm hasn't gone off yet." Luckily, I did decide to check what time it was because it was already 7:10am!! I rolled out of bed and  threw my clothes on. I had to grab whatever snacks I could since nothing in the fridge would be edible now and was out the door. As I drove to work I got to see the carnage in the light of day. It looked like the Apocalypse had come. Huge trees were knocked in the road, streetlights were snapped in half and about 10 houses had their walls destroyed leaving their backyards completely exposed. I cannot believe that microburst was so powerful that it could annihilate solid brick walls.

When I got to work I got a call from a coworker who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as I do and she said that police had just closed down the road that leads in and out of my street and that if you leave your home that you can't come back in. So now I can't even get back into my house until (hopefully) late this afternoon/evening. Luckily, one of my besties lives right by my work so I'm going to hide out at her house until I get the green light that I can come home. Pretty intense, y'all!

At least no injuries have been reported but I am sad to say that the quail family that lives in my front yard had 6 babies as of yesterday and this morning there were only 2 :(

Versailles

That one time I got to spend my birthday like a royal

This year I turned thirty years old and I got to celebrate my birthday like a princess. My birthday fell on Easter this year and I got to spend the day in a palace and not just any palace, I got to visit Versailles. I had been dreaming about getting to see this beautiful place for most of my life and I finally got to see it with my own peepers. It was a lovely day and I feel very lucky to have spent my birthday in such a magical way. Let me tell you about our day!

Versailles is quite a bit away from Paris so we took the train and got there in about an hour. When we arrived we spotted our first actually French french bulldog who immediately made a beeline to me for pets (and I was happy to oblige). When we got to the palace we were pretty grossed out by the size of the line but we knew it would be worth the wait. Everyone was being herded into this massive snaking line so we just followed everyone else. After waiting for about 40 minutes we noticed a sign saying "TICKETS" and it was pointing to a building adjacent to the line. I told Melissa I'd hold our spots in line if she wanted to peek in and see if we were supposed to buy tickets inside or at the end of this queue. Good thing we checked because everyone in line had already purchased their tickets and were just waiting to get into the palace. We ended up waiting 2 hours (barf) but while we waited we played a game where you say the name of a band or vocalist and whatever the last letter is of that group or person is that's the first letter of the next band you have to guess (For example, if you said Vampire Weekend the next person would have to think of  band whose name started with D). We totally effed up by not bringing something to eat while we waited in line so we started dying after an hour and a half (it was lunch time by then). Melissa went back into town and got us some food while I waited, though (bless her). When she got back we noticed that there were different people in front of us than who had been there this whole time. I was NOT happy about that. This entire German family cut in line while we were eating our lunch--SO RUDE. I was not having it so I just walked right in front of them and was like "HELL NAH!" Do not cut in front of Courtney on her b-day, people.



Versailles Palace

Once we finally got in we were pretty excited. The palace was humongous and it took several hours to walk through it even though we were being shoved from room to room. That's one thing that I didn't like, there were just too many people in this place that you were being pushed constantly and you didn't get to spend more than 2 minutes in each room. I like to take my time and go at my own pace but that really wasn't an option here. But if they had a limit to the amount of people they let in and we hadn't gotten in I would've been hella pissed.



You can call her Queen Bee

My favorite room at Versailles was naturally the Queen's room. I'm a huge Marie Antoinette fan and she's the main reason I wanted to visit. I wanted to walk down the same halls that she walked down and get a feeling of what it must've been like to live in such a place. Her bed was beautiful and had a lovely flower print motif. All around the palace there were portraits of her. I didn't manage to get a good picture of the King's bedroom because it was really dark but it was all red velvet. The Hall of Mirrors was cool but it looked pretty different with 10,000 people in it than it did in my textbooks. All of the pictures we took in there weren't great and we just look really tired. One neat thing that Melissa pointed out was all of the graffiti. You wouldn't expect the Hall of Mirrors to have graffiti but it did. People had scratched their names into the glass and some of the names dated back almost 200 years ago. It was crazy! I'd never EVER think to do that!



The Queen's bedroom

At the end of the palace tour they had a gift shop so I picked up a few things. I got a fleur de lis key chain (which I turned into a necklace), some postcards and a Marie Antoinette jewelry box. Afterwards we went out to the gardens and took a break. I was kind of surprised to see they were doing a ton of construction on the gardens. You don't think about things like that when you visit historical landmarks that they have to be renovated constantly to keep them from falling apart. Anyway, we sat in the grass and people watched while I finished the last bit of my veggie wrap from earlier. We watched this handsome man play with his adorable baby more than we looked at the gardens, haha! The moment I finished my snack a security guard started booting everyone off the grass. From there we decided to walk to Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette's estate. In retrospect, we should have started our day there because it turned out to be so much more our thing than the decadence of the palace. Petit Trianon was like a very beautiful dream. It was one of my most enchanting places I've ever seen.




Petit Trianon

First we went inside her "cottage" and walked through all of her rooms. Compared to the palace this house was quite small and cozy. We could understand why she felt more comfortable there. The rest of the estate was just lush countryside with huge trees, meandering pathways and flowers blooming everywhere. I got to sniff fresh lilacs and it was one of the most delicious scents I've ever smelt. In the center of the property she had a little village built and there were adorable thatched houses with cute gardens. The Queen would host plays in these cottages and entertain her guests. Our favorite part of Petit Trianon, though, were all of critters! We saw a muskrat eating grass by the lake as well as sheep, goats, cows, dogs and donkeys. I got to pet two of the donkeys and they were so sweet.

 

By then it was just about dusk and they were closing for the day so we had to leave. I thought we weren't going to make it back to the train station. We had been walking all day long and so exhausted that we got a bit turned around walking back so it took us about an hour to get back to the station. We had had a great day but we were super tired by the time we got back to Paris. When we did get back it was close to 8pm and Melissa had arranged for her brother to meet us for dinner. I don't have time to tell the whole story here but her little brother has been doing this amazing walking tour across Europe by himself for the past year. She hadn't seen him in 9 months and he was pretty close to Paris when we were there so he got on a train and came to meet us. When he arrived we all went to dinner at the same pizza place Melissa and I had been to the night before (pizza forever!). Melissa and her brother are both total cuties and it was fun to watch them interact and speak French to each other. I was pretty full after my pizza but ended up eating most of Moray's tiramisu anyway ;) It was a  great end to a great day and a birthday I'll never forget.



photobooth at Versailles station :)