Monday, April 16, 2007
Shittiest day in a long time...
Pardon the French, I'm not changing it.

We've had horrific winds in this area for the last twenty-four hours. We live in an old farmhouse with a tin roof and most of the night last night it sounded like the
roof was about to be ripped off. I sleep with earplugs and the noise kept me awake till 3:00 a.m. There is a window at the head of our bed and I could feel the gusts of wind puffing through the seams around the windows; not the panes, the actual window-frame in the wall. I finally put a pillow between the head of the bed and the window to buffet the wind coming through.

When I woke up there was this...


It was 26 degrees and the winds were blowing the snow horizontally. My dear husband brought me a gift in the shower; a nice round snowball.

After getting going, fifteen minutes late, I dropped Emma off at Mary's. She had no electricity. Hadn't since the night before. I offered to take Emma with me, but she said they'd be fine. My day with 3.5 hours sleep was not starting so good.

Then this horrific event happened:

Virginia Tech Shootings

Thank goodness I have no one I love down there now. M is an alumnus of Virginia Tech. Both of my grandparents were also. We have many kids in our community in school down there. The grapevine was buzzing all day as local parents were accounting for their children. Everyone I saw today wanted to talk about it. My gut was churning all day with every bit of increasingly worse news that was released. When these things happen there's an information explosion and you never know what to believe for the first twenty-four hours. Half of what we think we know now will turn out to be false. It's too much to process.

At the end of this stressful day I dragged myself and my baby home. The wind was still howling. Shortly after M got home we were talking in the living room. The house was suddenly blasted with a horrific long barrage of wind. It kept going and going and I got up to look out the window to see if there was a funnel coming from somewhere. It was terrifying. All of the items on our front porch were passing by the window. Then, across the road, I could see something very large flying through the air. It was the roof from a barn.

When the wind finally died down we went out the back door to get a better look at the damage. As I approached the back door I saw that both of Emma's play structures were gone. As in disappeared.


When we went out the door we saw one at the end of the house. The other one had completely disappeared.


We walked to where the first play structure had landed and looked around the corner of the house. The other one was laying halfway down the other side of the house.



Here is the barn that lost it's roof. The barn is the the far right and at least half of the roof is laying to the far left.


After we had assessed the damage we came into the house to get some dinner and we soon discovered something we had missed. We now have no water.



The spigot in the picture, which looks to be leaning left slightly, is actually sheared completely off. It was taken out by a flying play structure. We have no water and won't until someone can come out and replace the spigot. We ended up bagging our plans for dinner and I ran to town and got a pizza. I also popped by the store and picked up four gallon jugs of water. Emma had a bucket bath sitting on a plastic stool in the bathtub, and it will be whore's baths for the two of us in the morning.

I'm old enough and wise enough by now to know better than to ask, "What's next?"

Oh yeah, I found out tomorrow I will be presented with an extension to sign, instead of my completed tax forms. Arrrrrrrrgh!
Written at 8:07 PM by Highlandgal.
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