Timber. (or, Bad Ike!)

This weekend did not go as expected.

First, we had two things planned. One: mow lawn. Two: take pictures of baby. Then my parents called on Saturday morning and wanted us to come meet them for lunch in Lexington, which is about foty minutes from here. It was their anniversary and we thought, hey, might as well because after all, who cares about the gas prices*! M went out and mowed the lawn before we left, but we thought we'd save the pictures for Sunday. The lawn would be freshly mowed and it was supposed to be cooler. We thought that would work out well! We've been meaning to take "serious" pictures of Evie for weeks and months now but it somehow always gets put off because of weather or other plans or laziness or whatever. It was totally Going To Happen this time though!

(And, not a one of you are expecting to see 16-month pictures of my kid at the end of this post, are you? Ha!)

So, yes. We had a nice time, but there were no pictures taken Saturday. We did, however, finally get around to getting our eyes checked at McVisionsRUs. It's been way too long for both of us. I have been holding out because I wanted to go to my real eye doctor in my hometown but it is a bit much to schedule an appointment with a baby and make two separate trips up there just to pay more for the service, wait longer and also, factor in the cost of gas for the trips. When I was about eight, I got glasses for the first time, and I saw a different doctor for the first couple of visits. He made me cry. I am still leery of eye doctors and I barely even remember the first guy. M has been trying to convince me that I am an adult now and I can probably deal with someone else examining my eyes and so I finally decided to go with it. (Having said that, I was so anxious about it in the waiting room that I was sitting there seriously thinking that I'd probably rather be having a pap smear than see this new doctor and that is seriously messed up. Of course, I have also never been to any doctor where half of the exam is conducted in the waiting room in front of the other patients being herded like cattle through the office but still. WTF, btw?) But yay for new glasses! And they were to be ready on Sunday at four! Wow! But wait, that means we need to drive to Lexington again. Crap. Ahh, well, we'll still have plenty of time for pictures in the morning at least.

Except, I rarely take my toddler outside to play during the remnants of hurricanes. It didn't rain, though it was cloudy, but the wind was fierce. We puttered around the house, put the baby down for her nap and then decided to tackle our little storage room/closet. It gets super messy sometimes and just now it was stacked with my free stuff. We're organizing, getting stuff done. The little room is off the sunroom, so we are noting the windy conditions often. I am walking through the sunroom while M is in a different room when I hear a loud creaking sound and see something moving from the corner of my eye. TIMBER!

My husband, as is so often the case, is much more succinct than I am: clicky clicky linky linky with pictures.

So, that was special. We are SO LUCKY. It could have hit the house. It could have hit US, or our sweet little baby. It is mere feet from our computer room, where we would have been lounging had we not been taken by a fit of productivity. That tree is (well, WAS) freaking huge. There's a somewhat smaller chunk that fell towards the back of our property, which took out another tree. We also lost a huge branch in the front and there are gigantic limbs laying around in the branches like ticking bombs. As it is, the only damage other than to the trees themselves? Two sections of that lovely horse fence on our neighbor's property. (We walked over this evening to talk to him about it, which was much appreciated. He's a sweet older man who brings us organic vegetables in the summer and hangs them on our door handle so as not to 'bother' us. We met his daughter and granddaughter, who were just leaving, and she told us that her dad had said something about how he knew we'd be over to talk to them about it. I laughed later and said that it was really sweet because we have never once been over in the past, though he has walked over to talk to us, so it was sweet that he had such faith in us. M pointed out that we had never broken his fence before. Point taken.)

Anyway. So the wind died down and we decided to go on to Lexington to pick up our glasses. We walk in and they say, "oh, we tried to call you..." and that is when we knew that it wasn't going to end well. [Also, it helps, when you 'try to call someone' if you call the right number...] Apparently a computer system went down because the other store lost its power, and they were not able to finish the glasses. Haha, we were actually working on this pair but it's only half done! Too bad! But here, we did finish this first pair! So M, my darling sweet husband who I love beyond reason, received his glasses while I merely got a glimpse of my sadly gigantic lenses pre-framing (which just depressed me). M has terrible vision, yo. He has been complaining about needing new glasses for two years. Turns out that with his old glasses, he could only see with 20/20 vision! OMG, how awful! Spoiled brat. I sadly do not have any sympathy for his vision needs because some of us cannot even see that there are actually letters up on the screen without glasses. ;)

Oh well. Disappointing but no big deal, really, because they'll mail them to me (hopefully to receive tomorrow) and it's not like I can't see from the glasses I have. We have a nice little excursion, stopping in for Mexican in a newish restaurant which Evelyn LOVED for some reason. All was well and good until we got home and realized that our electricity was out. Sorta. The A/C had gone off just before we left and we assumed that we needed to go trip the breaker, but we forgot about it. When we returned, we realized that it was not just the air conditioning but half of the electricity in our house. We had power on one wall of the living room (so, the TV worked, but not the cable), in the bathroom, a light in our bedroom but not in the wall outlets... it was seriously messed up. I don't know who did our wiring but they had an interesting way of doing things. So suddenly we were in need of an electrician! Yay! Several long hours and some troubleshooting by my boyo, with assistance from my dad and grandfather, and we figure out that it was actually a problem with the electric company, so luckily we didn't end up with an expensive repair job on top of the tree expenses. The whole evening was really weird with these power issues, but we had full electricity back by eleven last night. Whee! It's a good thing, too, because otherwise, today would have been very boring. No TV, no cooking, no internet. I can't even bear to think about it.

This post has gotten much too long, but I should add one more thing. We had a storm-chasing tree service "company" come by last night and offer to give us a free estimate. They will happily do all the work for the wonderful price of $1800. We contacted other places today, including one that was recommended by a co-worker of M's, and they're going to take care of the big tree, and the dangerous limbs, for $600. So, while the whole thing sucks, it is not going to be a financial disaster like we feared at first, and since the tree turned out to be rotted in the middle... well, really, it was the best thing that could have happened that it fell down just the way it did. I did like that old tree, though. Luckily, I have six or twenty more trees to take its place in my heart...

The end. Finally.

*Some people care greatly about the gas prices. In fact, there were several incidents of fisticuffs breaking out at the gas stations in the town M works in on Friday. The cost of gas, it stinks, but you know what? As it turns out, gas prices didn't actually go through the roof like they were expecting. These shmucks got themselves arrested and assaulted over the equivalent of two dollars. The price of gas is terrible but WHY IS THERE SO MUCH HYSTERIA ABOUT TINY DIFFERENCES? Like the people who will stand in line for four hours to save ten cents per gallon and then run in and grab a carton of cigarettes or a Little Debbie. If that two dollars is so important to you, then maybe there are other areas you could consider cutting back on? Hmm?