Tuesday, a massive storm blew through town, turning the entire area into a disaster and an emergency was declared. This happened to our trees. The light-colored house is the neighbor’s house that one of the trees hit.
(To be fair, we were luckier than some, like people whose cars got destroyed or their windows shattered and so on.)
The power went out and was out almost the entire day the next day. My wife and daughter were at an amusement park, but I was home to work on house stuff, make sure the dogs weren’t too stressed, and get cleanup estimates from tree companies. The temperature was above 90F/32C most of the day. Not only was the internet out, obviously, but I had one bar of cell signal and data only went through about a quarter of the time. I had a power bank that kept my phone charged through the night and I did go to a cafe for a short while, along with the library for about an hour, just to cool off and have some decent internet.
The power came on that night, around 10 pm.
The next day we agreed to one of the estimates I got. It was $3200. We paid because we had no choice. At least it’s the neighbor’s responsibility to fix the fence since that part of the fence is theirs (although I had to put up a temporary blockade to stop our dogs from escaping) and their insurance is going to cover the damage where the tree hit their house. No one’s insurance around here covers the tree cleanup though. That’s an “act of god.”
Yesterday, we came home after visiting my mom in another town to the power being out again for hours. Flickering on and off sometimes. Thankfully, the house wasn’t ridiculously hot.
This morning, we woke up to find out that a water main broke and the whole area is under an order to boil water for at least three minutes before using it for any sort of food or drink.
On top of all of that, it was my birthday this week and the day started with my wife and daughter getting into a massive fight because my daughter suddenly didn’t want to go on a birthday family trip for me (she’s a teenager). And the fun part of that is that I’m so exhausted from health issues that I really just wanted to relax on my birthday and I was only doing the trip because my wife really wanted me to enjoy it and I didn’t want to disappoint her because she worries about me enough.
But at least I was able to put $200 towards my massive bill from the Mayo Clinic. The $200 birthday present I got from my mom.
Hooray me.
That sucks. BUT. on the bright side, I bet you remember this birthday more than you would if everything went swimmingly 😅 and you’ve got people who love and care about you enough to try to make your birthday special (even if a certain youngling is flipping out).
Yesterday the power flickered at my residence, and I was all of a sudden very aware of the almost 30 degree temperature difference between inside and outside (was 100 F here yesterday). Stay cool!