Humor: The Wind

We have some pretty strong gusts of wind where we live and we also have a couple of hundred tiny seedlings that we hand planted and are now well over 100 feet tall around our house and yard. Who would have thought that such cute little sticks with roots attached would have grown so big. We have come through pretty much unscathed for the last 30 some years, but a couple of years ago one large branch broke off and landed on the wires going between the pole and the house. It only stretched the wire and once the branch was chopped up, the lines popped back up undamaged. I told hubby, he should really take that tree down - "Naw, it will be fine," he says. Men will never learn to listen to their wives, two years later it cost him cold hard cash - maybe he will listen next time; probably not.

The other day, the whole top of the SAME tree broke off, landed on the line (cutting a few wires - enough to spark) and destroyed our meter box. In the middle of the night a disgruntled power guy (after having already worked 36 hours in the pouring rain and gale-like winds) stopped by and told us he could do nothing until we hired an electrician, had it inspected, and then they would come out and re-connect everything. He pulled out the wires from the pole so that our house would not burn down and left - thank you for that sir. Apparently, the wires fell on our TV cable wire; pulling the connector completely off and so we were without our TV, Internet and phone (we have the super deal package). I know, without power we would not have TV or the Internet anyway, but we would have still had a phone. Immediately, I turned into some crazy woman and began calling (on the cell phone) anyone who could fix the situation. If the cable line was connected, I would at least have a phone because I have a spare old phone that does not require electricity to run.

I have to admit the electricians and the inspector were "Johnny on the spot" and we had everything ready to go by mid-afternoon. In the meantime, there was another big wind causing many outages and so the power company could not come back and neither could the cable company. It was looking like we would be out of everything for a couple more days. Even though the phone was a priority for the cable company, they just could not get here until maybe after the weekend. Being the erratic person I am, my insides were churning and my hair was standing on end as I paced and thought of climbing the pole myself. That really was not an option for an almost 67-year-old woman with COPD and my kids and husband refused to do it.

The power company finally did spare a truck and of course I am a total wreck by now, so I beg the man if I could ride up the pole in his bucket, push the cable wire into the socket and duct-tape it together. Of course he said no because it was not allowed, but he was very leery of me after that request and kept his eye out as I wandered from wire to wire with my roll of duct tape in my hand. He was thankful for my youngest son who was out cutting the tree up as he kept taking my hand and leading me away from the wires.

He was about halfway through his work, when a stray cable guy came in the driveway, I nearly bowed down to worship at his feet, but restrained myself - mind you I had not slept in over 24 hours by then and was a few notches short of common sense. He put the end on the cable wire and after the power man repaired and hooked everything to do with power back up, the cable guy connected the cable and we were good to go.

I ran right in to my computer to check my mail - 6 emails, and 240 spams, I am back my sweet computer I say as I click "select all" and delete my spam mail, life will go on again - at least until the next wind storm.