It never rains but it pours

I feel as though I should have come up with a catchier title -- it never snows but it blows? but I'm not really up to catchy today. I slept very badly last night, with the wind blowing and blowing and blowing, and I'm not a happy camper this morning, thinking about all the things I have to deal with.

Long story short, another branch came off our Siberian Elm last night, during winds of up to 80 mph, maybe higher. (There were winds of up to 95 mph reported in Boulder at different times during the day/night.) It crashed through our porch roof -- not the skylight, as happened a few years ago, but the actual roof, pulling it away from the house in addition to making a huge, gaping hole. Now there is a thick, heavy branch beneath the porch roof and a whole lot more of the branch above the porch roof. We'll need major repairs done to the porch roof, but also, how do we get that branch down? Maybe if I had a chainsaw, I could cut it in half and then Teen A could go on the roof and throw down the top half...

One thing that I had hoped would happen in this storm is that the branch that was half lying on our roof (from the big snowstorm a few weeks ago) would finally break off entirely and blow into the yard. It didn't do that -- it's still attached to the tree, darn it -- but it did move off the roof. I am grateful for that. You have to be grateful for what you can get.

You can sort of see it in this picture. It used to be lying across the roof. Now it is next to the roof, bumping up against the gutters (probably damaging them, and who knows what it's already done to the roof). I could almost cut bits of it off with loppers. I wonder if that would be safe.

Of course there are many other things I need to do in the yard. This monster branch is still lying there, tangled up in the ruined clothesline. I noticed that it is positioned a little differently, though, as though the winds moved it around. The CenturyLink guy cut it in half so that he could reposition the phone/internet cables, and the two halves seem farther apart now.

Our next-door neighbor/tenant told me that a big branch came down onto their driveway -- I think from the baby volunteer Siberian Elm that's between the houses -- but her son moved it into their yard. 

The most ridiculous thing is that we never lost power. Xcel Energy preemptively cut power to many thousands of homes in the Denver metro area yesterday, including many of our neighbors', because the high winds were so likely to cause fires (if power lines were down and sparking). But not us. My next-door neighbor to the east, who is a caregiver for an old lady with Alzheimer's, took the old lady and went to stay at a relative's home in Brighton last night because she was worried about the wind and about losing power. This afternoon she called me to ask if we had ever lost power and when I said we hadn't, she told me she'd just gotten a call from Xcel saying they were going to cut her power TODAY, so she wasn't sure if she should come home or not. It's still windy, although not like yesterday. I hope we don't lose power now. That would pretty much finish me off.

One funny thing... well, maybe it's funny... we had a big hailstorm earlier this week! On Monday, I got a text from Kid A saying it was hailing at his high school. I looked out the window -- it wasn't even raining here. Well, the high school is two and a half miles away, sometimes the weather is different there. Anyway, about an hour later I looked out the window and saw this. Really significant hail, and it went on for a long time. 

Fortunately, it's only April, and no one in Boulder in their right mind would plant anything in April, so no plants were damaged (the junipers can take it). One year I remember we had a hailstorm in June or July that pretty much destroyed our garden.

In other news, we managed to acquire a new door from a neighbor this week, to replace the ruined bathroom door. The only problem is that it's a right-hand door and we need a left-hand door (or it may be the reverse, I can't seem to keep it straight in my mind what those terms mean). The hinges are on the wrong side. We took it anyway, though, stowed it in the dining room for now, because it's the right size, pretty much exactly matches the other doors in the house, it was free, and possibly a handyman will be able to re-engineer it so that it will work. 

So now I have to find a handyman.

And a tree-trimmer.

And a porch roof repairman.

And I'm having a colonoscopy on Wednesday.

All of this nonsense is happening JUST when I was planning to finally call an HVAC company about the rental house's furnace problems, that we learned about over a year ago (at that time, the quote for repairs was $3000 -- it will probably be more now). Rocket Boy and I decided it was best to wait for spring, when furnace companies would have more time to deal with weird problems like ours. I thought, OK, let's get the mammogram out of the way (it was normal, by the way), let's get the colonoscopy out of the way, and then let's start calling HVAC companies. Instead, I should probably deal with these branches and the porch roof before something worse happens.

Oh, and the property taxes on the cabin are due April 30 ($2363.58, a huge increase from last year), and the insurance policy premium on our house is due on May 3 ($2452.25, also a significant increase from last year). Speaking of insurance, Rocket Boy thinks we should contact our insurance company and see if they'll pay something toward these repairs. That makes sense, of course, but I'm always nervous about trying to get money out of insurance companies. It always seems to lead to higher premiums.

I'm pretty sure we're going to have to sell something. Mutual funds, stocks, I don't know what, but something. Maybe the twins' college funds, ha ha. I got a statement for them a few days ago, they're looking good, about $75,000 in each account (it wouldn't pay for a private school, but it would cover two years at Colorado State or U. of Wyoming, or the whole four years if they went to Metro State and lived at home). Considering we've never put any additional money in since we opened the accounts back in 2008, they've grown a lot. But yeah, no, can't touch that. I'm just trying to think of something positive regarding our finances.

Of course, there's that other kind of taxes, too, due April 15th. I turned all our materials over to our tax preparer around March 1st and since then I have not heard one peep. I don't know if we're getting a refund, if we have to pay... She'll probably get back to me in about a week, RIGHT before taxes are due. I don't want to bother her until then. Oh, maybe just one little nudge, to be sure she's still alive. OK, I just sent her a nudge.

Positive stuff! What can I say that's positive? It doesn't help that when I look out my window for inspiration, this is what I see (it's part of the branch that was formerly lying on the roof). If you compare this with the picture of the hail, you'll see how the branch has moved.

Last night was really scary, by the way. Because after the branch came down and smashed through the patio roof, the wind didn't, like, STOP, or anything. It went roaring on, for hours and hours more. I think that happened around 10 pm or so, and when I finally turned off my light (which wasn't until 2 am, not because I wasn't sleepy, but because I was too scared to go to bed), there was no reduction in wind. That 95 mph gust that they recorded up at NCAR was at 2:55 am. I slept in my clothes, fearful that I would have to jump out of bed and deal with an emergency in the middle of the night. I'm so tired today.

The kids and I joked about it a little. We were all scared, but even in the scariest situations, you end up making jokes. I made Teen B leave the kitchen (he likes to sit at the counter, playing on his phone and ipad), because I felt that we would be safer in the living room, farther away from possible marauding branches. After all, the National Weather Service advised us to "avoid windows." So we huddled together in the living room (OK, right next to a window, but not a window near the Siberian Elm), as it got later and later, way past their bedtime, making jokes. Teen A expressed worry about taking a shower. I said "Yes, just think, if a branch comes through the bathroom roof, then we won't have a bathroom door OR a bathroom ceiling!" Ha ha ha.

I called Rocket Boy to tell him what happened, and really yelled at him for not being here. Poor Rocket Boy. What is he supposed to do? His job is what makes it possible for us to pay for all these things, plus, oh yeah, he just had surgery. We've decided he will try to come out here the last week of April, so in about 3 weeks.

In the meantime, I just have to cope. I'm so bad at coping! But I have to. As Teen B says to me whenever I complain about anything, "You decided to have kids." And, "You decided to have a house." And other such statements. I say, "Can I change my mind?" but no, of course I can't. 

I feel as though all the things have decided to break at once. It's like they see one thing causing problems and they think, "Oh, it must be problem-causing time, let's do it too." Problem-causing time occurs every now and then, and all you can do is live through it.

So, the week ahead. Eating low-fiber foods today and tomorrow, clear liquids only on Tuesday, 12 horrible pills and a whole lot of pooping on Tuesday night, 12 horrible pills and a whole lot more pooping on Wednesday morning (and this is all with no door on the bathroom, la la la), off to Avista Hospital for my colonoscopy at 12:30 (if my friend Sally doesn't forget to come get me), and then that will be over and I can go back to working on all these house problems on Thursday.

We'll survive.