Rude Awakening

Ahhh… being able to sleep in is so nice…

And Noah finished preschool yesterday, and didn’t have to be at his kindergarten orientation until 9am! And Daddy took the day off so he could take care of the babies while Mommy pays attention to all the crazy information we must absorb. (Although he came for a look-around, too!)

So… we were all home, had a couple extra hours to kick around in the morning. A perfect day to sleep in a little.

You know where this is going, don’t you?

So, its 5:55am and something is different. Louder than the fan that is trying to wick away the humidity of the night (yes, we have no AC!). I open my eyes and look out the window. Its an odd color. And… foggy? Before I can wrap my mind around the odd world out there, Michael mumbles something about a storm. Rain.

Didn’t see that coming. “Do we have anything out there that shouldn’t be getting wet?” Michael fumbles some pants on and hoofs it down the stairs. I hear the sliding glass door open and then there is a…

BANG!!!

I sit up and see Noah’s door swinging open. I assumed a door must have just slammed, but instead it was swinging open. Then Noah calls, “Mommy?? Mommy!! Its too loud!!!” I come stumbling into his room and see leaves whipping around like a madhouse just outside the window. I pull his window fan in and slam the window shut. It’s a little bit quieter.

“Do I have to get up now?”

“No, baby, you can sleep another couple hours. Go back to bed”

I fix his blankets and close his door. Michael has come back in and I ask him what the bang was, did he slam a door. He assumes that a door slammed, but only Noah’s could have as the others were all already closed or are sliders. Odd…

And then Luka started calling, “Daddy!... Daddy!!”. And Noah realized he needed to use the potty. And our day had begun.

Daddy said he would handle it, he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep anyway. So I rolled over and dozed for an hour or so without any real sleep. And then I padded down the steps, supported by the smell of coffee.

Another odd site caught my eye and although I like to do nothing but head straight for the coffeepot first thing, I turned and tried to figure out why there were 5 men in blue shirts moving around 2 feet from my front window.

“Mommy, Look what happened!!”

I followed Noah’s pointing finger to a protrusion in the ceiling of plaster and what looks oddly like cardboard. There was a hole in the ceiling. Not a big one, but a hole nonetheless. Only about three inches across. Apparently a large branch had fallen off the tree out front and landed on our roof. The men had hauled the larger pieces off the roof and were gathering smaller branches and leaves, and pieces of the streetlamp that had once lit up our front yard.

I went up to Noah’s room and looked out on the roof that his window looks out upon. I was expecting some gaping pit, but the hole there was about the same size as the one in the living room, and I realized a branch had not busted the roof, it had speared it like a javelin!

I also realized that when I had seen those leaves whipping around in a frenzy outside Noah’s window while pulling the fan inside, was that they had been entirely too CLOSE to Noah’s window, and that they must have been the giant tree branch tapping on the screen with big sloppy maple leaves. Odd, I hadn’t noticed they were about 8 feet closer than they usually are!

So, now, we are thankful again for being renters, and called the property management company. Awesome company, as the guys were out there removing branches only an hour after it had fallen. But it also means that we will be dealing with roofers and perhaps plasterers, and pots to drip water into when it rains for a little while.

And a little less shade that we already had…

See, the tree was duly punished for no longer being virile and forthright and was trimmed and chopped to within an inch of its life, loosing anything that did not look completely trustworthy. It is now a very tall, very skinny maple tree, shaped more like a cedar.

Or a javelin. Heh.