Last Saturday, Hurricane Irene pounded the Eastern Seaboard. Michael and I were talking about how bad the storm was going to be (he didn't think we were going to get much), but I was more cautious. Granted, we've had hurricanes in Maryland before, but they didn't do a lot of damage (at least where we lived.) This storm, though. This storm scared me. I flippantly joked with him that "all we needed was for a tree to fall on our house" and we'd get a new roof to match the new floors, walls, trim, paint, and kitchen cabinets from the great broken-housepipe flood from three weeks ago.
I was at work that night, and barely slept, as I was up worrying about Michael and the kids and whether or not they had power. I kept imagining a tornado ripping the house off of it's foundation or a tree falling through the house. That, of course, got me thinking about what I would do if there were, say, a tornado heading straight for our house. What WOULD I do? Would I have time to make sure the kids were safe? Would I throw the twins and Taryn under the bed? Huddle all 5 of us in the closet (how would I do that?) What about dad? He sleeps upstairs. Would he hear the tornado coming? On and on these thoughts went, all night long. At the end of the day, Irene passed (seemingly) without any interruption of our daily routine. We hadn't even lost power at my father's house, when we are currently staying until we can sell our other house (thank goodness - could you imagine no power in the middle of August with 2 infants and a toddler?) Michael went back to our house on Monday to pick up the mail and check on everything, and he said all was well.
All was well, except for the GIANT TREE that was laying on our house, that he didn't even NOTICE(?)! (bless my husband, but he's got to be one of the most oblivious people on the planet.) Thanks to Irene, a giant oak tree fell ON OUR HOUSE. Yep. Michael met with the insurance agent today, and they're going to send someone out to cut the tree away from the house ASAP. After that, they can assess the damages.
Great. Another round of phone calls. Another round of driving back and forth to the house. Another round of meeting with insurance agents, contacting contractors, etc. ugh. At least I'm in a better place now than I was 3 weeks ago. I remember staring at the phone and thinking, "this is too much work." "I don't want to call the insurance company." "I don't want to deal with the cleaners." "I don't want to get out of bed." Basically, I just wanted to melt into the floor. I still am balking at this ever-expanding list of things to do, but I guess this is proof positive that the meds are working, since I can actually function and not feel like I want to curl up into a ball at the thought of dealing with unexpected occurances.
So, it looks like by the time this is all said and done, we're going to practically have a new house. With any luck, the improvements that are being made (that desperately needed to be made in order to have a snowball's chance in hell of selling the place) will allow us to sell the house AND bank some money to put toward the purchase of house that can fit a family of five. That thought actually makes me kind of happy. It's nice to feel hopeful, again.
