It All Hits the Fan

 

This commercial tree crew was exactly what we needed.  The guy is sawing limbs that use to be completely upright before the large branch broke loose.

The second half of May and into the first few days of June were a time in my life that I would much rather forget.  It was one seemingly unceasing disaster (of varying degrees) after another.  Thank goodness life isn't this way all the time, though I'm sure for some people it is.  I'm sorry if that's the case.

It started at my mom's house.  The electricity went wonky.  Out of nowhere, there was too much power in some rooms, not enough in others.  Light bulbs burst in one part of the house and would not come on at all in another. Freaky stuff.  And a potential hazard for an electrical fire in the house.   The cable modem was fried and had to be replaced.  But that would be later, this all happened on a Sunday.  

Miraculously, I was able to get an electrician out there.  He's a great guy who works for the local power company and does electrical work on the side during his off-hours.  He said it was likely the main circuit in the electrical panel.  But it was Sunday and it was an old breaker and he'd have to get it from a particular store 20 miles away that wasn't open.  Since the panel was so old and had been wired mostly by my dad in all kinds of crazy ways through the years like any twice remodeled house, I decided to just replace the whole panel, which he could do on a Sunday.  Four hours and a lot of money later we had power.

It was quite an achievement, in that small human sort of way.  Night was coming on and, since the house had no power, he was relying on several bright flashlights to see what he was doing.  A severe thunderstorm rolled through dumping buckets of rain.  He worked on in that tiny closet of the house from the 1950's.  He was a big man.  He took so much of the small closet that all his assistant could do was hold light for him and give him a third hand now and then.  Here, hold this.  Handy in the right moment.  A tornado warning followed the thunderstorm. The winds picked up considerably.  He worked on.  

It is amazing what can be accomplished with the right people and enough money to prevent an electrical fire and restore power to an old house in the middle of heavy rain and tornadoes...on a Sunday.  

Only that didn't fix the problem.  Two days later its was wonky again but now it was more chaotic.  Some rooms that didn't have power before now had too much.  The kitchen didn't work at all.  All the stuff in the refrigerator had to be moved to another house temporarily (again).  The electrical guy was working that day so it took him longer to attend to the issue.  My brother relayed most of this information to me.  It never occurred to him or anyone else to turn the main breaker off.  So the house sat there fluctuating for a couple of hours until I finally thought to go check it myself and turn the damn thing off.

When the electrician finally arrived, he saw the problem incoming to the new board but didn't know exactly what was causing it.  Process of elimination suggested the main ground cable.  We didn't know for sure but it was cheaper than rewiring the rooms of the house, which would have been the next step.  There was still a fire danger.  He got the cable, which was very expensive, and in pulling the old cable out he found a large gap in it.  He really didn't know how that happened but it was probably just wear and tear through the decades, and possibly being gnawed on by rats or other critters through the years.  That finally fixed it.

That's not all, of course.  About this same time I received a diagnosis that is going to require a minor medical procedure.  There's a 30% - 50% chance of it recurring in the next five years.  That sucks.  I was hoping to be much older before I had to start addressing these sorts of things.  It will require a slight lifestyle adjustment to help prevent future recurrence.

My dad's nursing home insurance was terminated, which is kind of a big deal.  His nursing home care costs many thousands of dollars a month.  The termination was supposedly due to no renewal submission, even though I (and my attorney) have documented proof of submitting it weeks prior to the deadline – complete with a tracking number their system assigned my dad at the time.  I have my attorney on that but it weighed rather heavily on my anxiety.  I have power of attorney.  I have to deal with this crap.

Then there is the fact that, while the electrician was hooking up a new completely electrical panel for my mom's house, we had not one but two tornadoes pass within a half mile of my home.  Wind gusts were briefly 80 MPH here.  Luckily, there was no structural damage to the house or to my pole barn but the tree damage in my woods was considerable.  I cleared part of it myself but it was too much for me to handle.  I had my tree guy come and inspect everything.  It was during that walk-around of Twin Oaks we discovered that an enormous elm tree literally directly across my driveway from my carport had just about split in half.  A very large branch (the size of a tree itself) cracked loose from the base and had fallen over about 10 feet or so.  There was a gaping wound at the base of the branch where the exposed elm was twisted.  Being a very hard wood, it was still hanging on, but it would have to be cut soon or it would crush several maples and other things it was overhanging.  

Glacially, it was popping and falling but somehow hanging on.  My tree guy and I were both desperately were trying to find a bucket truck to get up there and saw off the limbs now heavy with leaves that used to be in the top of the tree but now, weighing greatly, they were slowly pulling the large branch over and downward. The damage from the storm was widespread so every bucket truck in three counties was spoken for.  “I can get to you in three days,” was a common refrain.  That branch was not going to be standing in three days.  No way.  The original 10 feet displacement was now double that.  We didn't know anybody who knew anybody who might have a truck. 

Finally, late the next day, I found a big commercial outfit out of Chattanooga who would happen to have a crew about 20 miles from me the next dat.  I was told they could get to us by 1PM.  The guy cut me a deal on the costs but the crew was delayed for various reasons.  Daylight was wasting.  Every couple of hours I called the guy back and said “This branch is going to fall.”  

On top of everything else, it was windy that day, of course.  The branch was slowly giving way due to added weight of the wind through the highly displaced limbs and leaves.  What used to be at the top was now at the side, going over and down.  The tree itself was disoriented and gradually giving way.  It was a disaster in slow motion.  Outside my bathroom window I was looking directly across the roof of my carport at the broken elm, the enormous gash facing me, almost teasing my anxiety.  

The crew finally showed up late in the day and finished up after about three hours just as night was setting it.  They did a fantastic job and it was definitely worth the money.  They arrived in a crane bucket that went up about 100 feet.  The guy working the saw almost nonstop for three hours was obviously an expert and tirelessly young, in his twenties.  Jennifer and I applauded the crew when they finished up.  It was an outstanding service.

But I was left with a huge pile of branches and large chunks of elm from the branch itself.  That was in addition to all the other damage on my property, some of which I had already cleared with my own chainsaw.  The top of a giant pine fall over one of my primary walking trails but it was caught up perfectly in the top of an oak on the other side of the trail.  There it was, the top and a lot of the trunk to one of my largest pines almost perfectly caught up in the top of an oak.  Only this was way up there, probably 50 feet high.  

My tree guy's crew worked several days on all the rest of the damage and cleaning up the elm.  His main chainsaw man climbed up there and cut the pine loose as it hung over my trail.  There was some collateral damage but that was to be expected.  A lot of stuff is still lying where we finished cutting it up.  Jennifer wants to bring in a chipper to mulch the elm and other assorted oaks, maples and pines that were lost.  But it is far too wet for that.  The ground is too soft from a May that brought 11 inches of rain when 4 is normal. So most of it will sit where it is until drier weather comes. 

Then my water main broke near the meter, but I didn't catch it until after our water bill came in.  Our usage was sky-high, the most ever.  WTF?  I went down to the utility company.  Everyone was very helpful, first-rate people.  They showed me a graph of my usage over the past six weeks.  It looked like a bull market rising in my water usage.  WTF?!  I rushed home in a higher than usual state of panic and found the leak almost next to the water meter.  My tree guy's crew was there and one guy knew plumbing.  He offered to fine the leak and dug a pretty good size hole, hacking into tree roots a lot of the time.  It was very hard labor.  Finally, we could see it.  The main line pipe was no longer cleanly connected to the PVC going to the meter.  Somehow through all these years, it had shifted just enough to pull the pipe's almost completely apart.  Great time to bring that up!  That had to be fixed immediately.  

I called my plumber, the same guy from mom's house in April,(it's been a tough year in many ways).  I happened to catch him between jobs.  He said he would be right over.  In about a half hour he was working on it with two assistants.  They were working a big basement job on a new house nearby.  They changed the fitting and re-glued everything but we left the water off so the glue to set well.  He went back to finish his basement job and then came back about two hours later.  Everything worked like a charm.  

Let's see, what else?  My daughter lost her job.  She has pieced together some part-time contract work from several different companies, trying to get by until she can find something more permanent.  There is a major split-up happening in my family.  The wife threw the husband out of the house for drinking so much after asking me to intervene.  I had been counseling them for awhile and it seemed like a hopeless situation to me.  That weighed on me, too.

All this happened within the course of less than 3 week's time.  As Kurt Vonnegut used to write: “So it goes.”  I could add other things.  The usually daily crap that tends to piss me off or irritate me now and then.  But that's the ordinary, baseline level of suffering.  This was quantum suffering in seemingly quantum time.  It is funny how, after enough shit happens to you all and once, it just loses its impact after awhile.  At least for me.  What?  Another minor catastrophe.  No biggie.  Apparently, I'm now a collector.  

Ground cables are not supposed to look like this.

(Written without AI assistance.)