Jun 022011
 

Monday and Tuesday proved to be interesting days, mostly because of the weather we have been having in the Northwoods.  Work was interesting too, but that was just because I was crazy busy having to add one more task to my repertoire of already filled to the brim things that need to be crammed into an 8 hour day.

But work is another story.

Monday brought with its wonderful self high winds and thunderstorms.  In waves.  But to spice things up just a tad, we also got a nice smattering of hail, with some up to golf ball size.

And, in the tradition of our neck of the woods, a power outage.  But this one, like the one we encountered 2 weeks ago, blacked out the whole community in which we live, not just our “circuit.”  Again, we were very grateful that we had the generator to provide electric to our house so that we could function.

But it also brought about another problem that may have been attributed to the sudden power outage that wasn’t discovered until Tuesday morning:  a coffee maker that did everything but brewed coffee.  It worked just fine on Monday, but when I looked at it with sleepy eyes at 5:30 am on Tuesday longing for a hot cup of java to bring my mind to life for the day ahead, all I saw was an empty pot.

The lights were on but nobody was home.  That’s right, it turned itself on at the appropriate time to start up and brew the liquid gold that is so appreciated in this house, but the pot was empty and the warming pad was cold.

NOT a good way to start my morning.

That machine is damn lucky that I still keep a stash of instant around just in case the world is coming to an end.  Or in case the coffee maker takes a dump.  Same thing at 5:30 in the morning.  But hey, with enough vanilla creamer, any coffee can taste good.

And it did.

So after work, I had time to tinker with the damn machine and see if it was absolutely totaled.

It was.

This is unfortunate, since it was quite expensive.  But it also was a piece of crap that we’ve had to replace once a couple years ago because it was defective.  Now, it was way past any kind of warranty and completely dead.  Only after cleaning the counter space from where it was located did I finally discover what was probably the reason for its demise:   A nice brown stain perminately etched into our fairly new countertop from the underside of the heating pad when it went “poof!”

So, I lug the piece of crap out to the garbage can for a proper burial and head back inside to see if I can salvage the counter.  While I’m scrubbing away trying to get the stain out, the lights flicker.

The wind is blowing like there is now tomorrow and I suddenly hear a tree cracking.

Naturally I freak and run from window to window hoping it isn’t around my yard.

Then I hear it again.

Just to give you a mental image, there  are no windows or doors open in the house and I am hearing a tree crack.  That is how loud it is.

I’m ready to dive under the table.

I like gusts over 40 mph about as much as I love having my teeth ripped out.  When you live in an area that have trees around the peremiter of your yard that are over 60 feet tall, you tend to be cautious of falling trees, limbs and power lines.  And pray they don’t fall on you.

Luckily, this is the extent of what landed in our yard on the large scale.

To add insult to injury, Rick comes home and wants to split the new pile of wood that was delivered, and wants me to stack it.  This means having to go outside in the monsoon winds.  Under the tall trees.  And a power line.

Well, I’m still here, but believe me, I wasn’t above diving under the back porch a couple times, especially when  a branch fell 10 feet from me.

  2 Responses to “The Calm After the Storm”

Comments (2)
  1. Whoa, sounds like you had some interesting fun this week! I hate the fact that your coffee maker took a pooper, but I love how you wrote about it. Sounds like something I would say and do! Sorry about your counter, can you get the stain out? Hopefully you can, it’s such a beautiful counter! Or, if you can’t, it’s a conversation piece 🙂

  2. Nope, stain is there for good, I’m afraid. Like the idea of the conversation piece…

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