Our Big Storm

Thursday evening we had a serious thunderstorm. Normally, when the storm sirens go off, we sort of think "Feh. Not so bad" and keep doing what we are doing. Typically, I love thunderstorms and enjoy watching them go by. The same was true Thursday night until we saw the trees along our fence line double over. As we were running, one of our two big maple trees on the side of the house snapped in half. Eeek! One of our dogs, Louis, didn't follow us in to the safe spot. Instead he sat on the couch with a chew. Of course, I had to go retrieve him and pictured myself being sucked out a window and skewered by flying debris. Although, at my current weight I think we'd need a solid F-5 twister to even slide me across the floor, which gives me some comfort, but does nothing for my self esteem.
Once the worst of the storm had passed, it was still pouring rain and producing grape size hail. During all this, we discovered that the downspouts on our eaves troughs were blocked on the back of the house. Rain water is POURING in to one of our window wells and filling it up fast. Too late. The water reaches the bottom of the window quickly and starts coming in. Aaarrrrgggghhh!!! So what do we do? I go out on the deck with a long metal spoon, then clear away the debris that I can reach. Curt, meanwhile, goes out in the elements with a bucket and starts bailing out the window well. On the other end of the house, we need a tall metal ladder to reach the eaves. And, yes, we go out with a tall metal ladder to clean the eaves troughs. Looking back it was really, really stupid and we knew it while we were doing it, but we would not have any more water in our lower level. Not having it.
By the time we were done clearing the eaves troughs, the worst had passed, the hail had let up and we were ready to head back in. Now, I forgot to mention that in storms like this we almost always end up losing power- once for five days, a day or so on other occasions. So, at the point that we went outside with the ladder, we were thrilled that the power was on. When we got back in with the ladder, the frickin' power was gone. AAARRRRGGGHHH! Curt and I are kind of big whiny babies when the power goes off, as if we have no other means of entertaining ourselves. We're sad.
Typically, losing power for a day or so is not a giant deal. However, the next day, Curt was staying home to take delivery of 6 juvenile discus fish that he had ordered from San Francisco. These are expensive fish and pretty sensitive to water conditions that are slightly off. So, Friday morning, I run to Home Depot and buy a generator big enough to power to whole house if we needed it. A little overkill maybe, but considering how often we go without power, it was about time. We got everything up and running by about 8:30. Curt's fish arrived at about 9:30 and I was off to work by 10:30.
Today, the power is back and we're going to spend the day chopping up the part of the tree that is down, hauling it to the curb, then figuring out how to take the rest of the tree down. Considering the size of the tree and the mighty mite size of my chain saw, this could take a while.