The Day After The Big Storm

   Well, it's over. The Big Storm of October 2011. We didn't get as much snow as predicted, which is a good thing. I can't begin to imagine the damage if there had been that much snow on the leafy trees. As it was, we lost some big branches.

   The cracking noise of a tree branch breaking sounds like gunfire. At one point last night, I got freaked out. I was in bed, in my customary pj's, when I heard a branch break. I realized that my bedroom is a box hanging off the back of my house, and that my house sits next to a wooded lot, that is filled with big trees. I could imagine a branch, or even a whole tree, crashing down on top of my bedroom. Either it takes the whole room off, or just crashes through the ceiling. Neither of these options warms my heart.

   I got out of bed, put my house clothes back on, and went into the living room. I sat here on the couch, going through my options. The first one I discarded was to go in and sleep with my son. I doubted he would welcome my presence. Then I thought about sleeping on the couch. That idea too was quickly discarded. So I had to go back into my bedroom. I decided that I had better sleep in my clothes, in case the worst happened. In my pants pocket, I put a small flashlight, to find my way out of the wreckage. I even left my glasses in the living room, because they would get totally lost if the worst happened.

   Before I went back into the bedroom to try and sleep, I decided to take my flashlight outside and see if there were any really large trees in the lot next door that I might be in danger of being crushed by. I really didn't think any of them looked like they were ready to fall on me. So I was able to go back and try to sleep. I fell asleep with my cell phone clutched in my hand, in case Hubs needed to call me. I also brought the house phone in, even though we had no service, just in case it came back on during the night. I needed to be able to call for help.

   As of this morning, no giant trees had fallen on my house. Even my Jeep, parked under his customary tree, was undamaged. There were some branches down in the driveway, and two of them straddled the power lines to the house. We also have two big branches down in the pool area. The one hanging over the fence didn't even damage it! And so far, the other branch looks like it didn't damage the liner of the pool.

   Our next door neighbor wasn't so lucky. The big tree between our driveways lost several large branches, the biggest one fell on their cars, nailing both of them. I think it would have been worse, but the roof stopped the branch from coming all the way down.  The roof of the one car is dented in and the rear window got blown out. That really sucks.

   So, all in all, I think we were pretty lucky, as we didn't lose power for more than a minute or two, and were able to stay warm. This morning, my daughter asked if she could come over and shower. I gave her some good, hot chocolate coffee. She also charged her cell phone and nook while she was here. I told her that if she still doesn't have power tonight, she and her Hubs can sleep here, son's room is not being used and he has a queen size bed.

Here are a few photos I took during the storm yesterday. It was still early when I took this one...

Here's our walkway, after about an hour of snow.

   Kim out.