In Which Yet Another Tree Falls

And then disaster struck. Again. Monday night around 10:15, my husband and I were watching a movie on the DVD player in the master bedroom, when there was a loud WHUMP! sound, and we were suddenly cast into darkness. We ran out into the yard to discover that a large portion of a very big tree had fallen. Of course, it fell in such a way as to take out our power, phone, and Internet; the power line itself was down, draped over and around our front steps.

If you have been following this blog, this story will sound awfully familiar to you, because I've lived through it several times in the past year. Last summer in July, the neighbors had a weeping willow tree fall at 3 a.m. The only house that lost power was ours.

Then in August, a huge tree fell in our own yard, as we watched, during a summer storm. It took us WEEKS to clean that one up. This past March, a big tree fell on the property behind ours, as I was watching from the bedroom window. Finally, that was one that did not impact us personally, though I did get to see it fall.

Our only phone is a land line phone in the house, which goes out, of course, when the power does, and when the line is cut. So my husband grabbed the phone numbers for the power and phone/Internet companies and walked out into the darkness, looking for a neighbor's house with lights on. There were none. So we decided to wait and address the situation at first light.

Morning came and I took some pictures of the downed tree, which is to the right in the photo. (The big stumps to the left are from last summer's big tree that fell; I kept them to use as "chairs" in the yard.) The new tree that fell did not hit the house or any of the cars, for which we are grateful.

We got into my husband's car and he dropped me off at my work office to make some phone calls and send some emails. I called first the power company and then the phone/Internet company. Both said they would try to get somebody out to our place TODAY.

And they were right. By the time we arrived home, the power company guy was in our drive way with a huge truck, and he was up on the cherry picker, putting in a new power line from our house out to the road. (I guess telling them that we had a live power line draped down over our front steps, and that we had to crawl down the side of the porch to get to the car, impressed them into quick action.) By 11 a.m., our power was back.

Once the power line had been addressed, my husband went out with a hand saw and did some trimming around the downed tree. We dragged a bunch of branches and debris out of the way and onto a pile by the edge of our woods. This left a nice, clear area for the next guy to work.

And so just before 2 p.m., the phone/Internet company guy showed up and got us back online. He also did us the favor of firing up his chainsaw and cutting the tree into smaller sections that my husband and I can move ourselves, if we choose to.

As of the writing of this post, we are back in business. We have everything we had a few days ago - power, light, heat, phone, Internet - but now we are exceedingly grateful for it all. Yes, it's wonderful: to get back all those things we took for granted yesterday!

The soundtrack song for (yet another) fallen tree is this one: Stevie Nicks, with If Anyone Falls. Oh, and just for fun, let's add another one: Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, with Please Help Me I'm Falling.