Monday, November 16, 2020

Ill Wind

Tim was happily sitting on the couch watching his Steelers. They're 9-0 and he's excited about that.
I was dumbing around on my phone, because I'm not nearly as excited about football as he is. 
(This translates to 'I could give a rat's butt'.)
However, he likes it when I'm enjoying the game with him. 

It was a blustery day. Earlier, I had to make a quick run to Walmart.
I was shocked when I came out the door. The wind was blowing so hard it literally knocked me backwards through the door. I took a deep breath and headed back out the door. By the time that I got to the car, the gust had settled to a bluster and I could walk upright. 

I got home and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon pretending that I cared about football 
with my husband who isn't pretending. 

I received a flurry of texts even as my brother in law called. 
"You might want to get down to Grand Valley. You've got two trees down on your house."

I told Tim. 
He waited patiently for the punch line. 
Dave's a joker. 
Except not this time.

So we got in our car and headed out. It was already getting dark. The power outage started in Youngsville and continued all the way to Grand Valley. 

It was a strange thing driving 25 minutes and never seeing a light. 

When we got to the retirement property it was completely dark, but in the headlights, 
we could see that one of the trees hung over the front of the house by 20 feet. 

Tim said, "Well I wasn't expecting this."

We stood in the glare of the headlights, shining the flashlight up. 

Tim said, "This is bad," and then he walked around the house.






This house is the one that has snakes living in the walls. 
We rehab houses and I was not against rehabbing this one, until I discovered 
that whole snake thing.
 I planted my foot firmly. 

  (I can put up with a lot of stuff, but I'm not putting up with that, thanks.) 

So it's not a terrible thing that two trees fell on this house. 

The problem is that we've been filling it up with the stuff for the new house. Someone was throwing out an unused woodstove. We envisioned a woodstove on our screened in back porch at our retirement house, so that thing came home with us and got stuck in the snakey house. Along with some furniture that had belonged to his mom that Tim wanted. And my butcher block. A french casement window we both fell in love with. A very cool exterior door. A friend was selling a very nice hickory kitchen. Two years ago a tree had dropped on his house. He decided as long as he was rebuilding, he'd redesign his kitchen. We liked those well built hickory cabinets and bought them off him. They got stuffed in that little house too. That boarded in front porch? That holds two four wheelers and a rototiller. 

So our storage unit is full. While it is not terrible that two trees fell on it, we needed to maintain the integrity of that storage space until next summer. The tree was through the roof on one side, had splintered rafters on the other, and the back of the house was pushed in, with broken windows and a door knocked completely out of the wall and laying against the opposite wall.

                                 We did some chainsaw work, put the door back in, propped it in place.                                         Not much else you do can in the dark.


 But it's an ill wind that blows no good. We went back up today. This is the root system of the pine tree blown over. The 'cave' is about 12 feet tall. I can't wait to get in there and start looking for artifacts!

Informal poll: If you buy a hickory kitchen from a man who had a tornado hit his house and knock a tree down on it, and then you bring those aforementioned cabinets to be stored in a house that has two trees blow down on it, would you consider the cabinets cursed and not install them in the new house?

13 comments:

  1. Hmmm..... I'm thinking "two wrongs don't make a right", but I'm not sure how that fits in here.

    I'm going to say no, they're not cursed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When we bought our house it had 13 pine trees around it. They were tall and looked like the first bit storm would blow them into the house. we found an Amish man that owned a saw mill and he wanted them. He cleaned them up and our yard was so much neater. We have large oak trees now. I am sorry for you loss, hope you can at least save the treasures you have stored in it. Watch out for snakes in the drawers amd cabinet doors. They like to snuggle in places like that. I know from experience. Was there rain with this wind?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am not sure whether to congratulate you or commiserate with you. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is it not too late to add onto the garage? Looks like you have plenty of building materials leaning up against your house!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stuff like this keep happening Ed, the man's going to be investing in a portable sawmill.

    AC - You go right ahead and congratulate me. I'm taking it as a divine validation for my new house stance.

    Ellie - Rain went through with that wind.

    Kelly, I don't actually believe in cursed cabinets, but dang....

    ReplyDelete
  6. I would be saying sayonara to those cabinets, definitely cursed in my opinion. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'd give serious thought to torching those cabinets. I'm rather superstitious and what's the saying...third time's the charm? Yeah, burn those bad boys. Found your blog a few weeks ago and really enjoy it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yes! Cursed cabinets in a house where snakes live! I’d be running for the hills!

    ReplyDelete
  9. baby boomers are going to get abused and treated like garbage in the retirement homes. Maybe you boomers shouldn't have been so selfish and arrogant and greedy. Literally everyone hates baby boomers now. Enjoy those retirement homes, and good luck, boomers!

    ReplyDelete
  10. ...and never was a more perfect segueway for the curse that is 'anonymous'.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a shock to see that. Have you had a lot of wet weather like we have recently in the UK.When formula 1 is on I disappear quicker then a car at the start if the race. Can't stand it. I don't mind England international football.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I definitely would think the word cursed would cross my mind. Those were some powerful storms. Hope everything works out. One of my biggest fears is that happening to our giant silver maple in our backyard. We get one or two ill winds in our area and the city has lost many trees. Take care.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Or something like that.

    Still -- HOLY COW! Those are big trees!

    ReplyDelete

I'm glad you're here!

A Better Day

 First of all, I want to thank every single person who recommended 'Puckoon'. Oh my gosh. It has been a long time since I laughed so...