The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont.

I'm standing next to my husband, explaining to a friend how stressful it is on us from the long-taking work on our house from May's storm.

"We constantly make word substitutions, or revert to pointing at something in order to communicate," I said. "Our brains are mush."

"Yes," agreed my husband. "And forgetful, too. Just this morning, I forgot my binoculars."

We looked at each other and cracked up laughing. We both KNEW he'd meant to say glasses. We're praying our friends and acquaintances will understand, and hopefully, whenever our house gets fixed, we'll go back to a new normal.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

I was only gone for a few minutes. Honest.

There have been construction workers and masons and plasterers here off and on all day. My poor hubby came home from work, exhausted, so attempted to catch a few winks before supper. With the workers gone, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t picked up the mail. It’s only 70 steps from our front door. 140 steps all together. When I came back into the house, my groggy husband was laughing on the phone. I almost picked up an extension, because, from his joviality, it had to be a relative, especially since he was talking on his cell phone, a number which only a few people have -- which also meant I couldn’t have picked up an extension, anyway.

When he hung up, he told me he was so embarrassed that even his eyeballs hurt. The voice on the other end sounded exactly like his brother in Wisconsin. The voice said, “Hi. I’m Bob your plasterer.” Well, as it happened, BRUCE, our plasterer had just left our house a couple of hours earlier, so DH responded, “You are such a con artist. Oh, har-har-har! Some contractor you are.” Apparently, the person on the other end of the line became defensive at this greeting, and explained that he couldn’t get back to him sooner since his wife was dying and they were at the Cleveland Clinic. This definitely wasn’t his brother. But why did he even have our cell phone number?

A million apologies later, my husband finally hung up and tried to find a place to hide, even though Bob couldn’t see him. I tried to assure him that some day, when our house is all put together again, and we can look back on things which happened during this time, that he would probably find this funny. He moaned pitifully before slinking off into the basement.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

This morning we “lost” our dumpster. It was full, from our stuff as well as a neighbor's. A semi-truck came, sinking its wheels onto our lawn, and drove the rusty old thing away.

Many neighbors still have their dumpsters from the storm which struck our area in May, or else their dumpsters have disappeared because their houses are completely repaired. Not ours though.

Somehow, we felt helpless watching it leave. Because our house isn’t fixed, and now we don’t even have a dumpster, my husband commented, “It feels like we’re second class recoverees.”

Now, we're keeping our eyes out for the return of an empty dumpster in our green-ish yard. That would mean workers would be returning to... work. Yea for dumpsters!

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

Because a tree crashed through our old windows, now at last, six weeks later, our new windows showed up in our construction person’s red truck. My husband looked out and said, “ I wonder if it was a pane to drive them here?” I groaned and he continued, “You should have seen through that.”

Tired and Stressed Out Conversation

So… we’re at the breakfast table, listening to the Amish workers next door using power tools, when my husband asked how they got to town if they don’t believe in driving cars, or how they could use power tools if they don’t believe in electricity.

I then remember a fact we learned at a fair years ago. “Remember that one fair where the pigs ran for the mash? Mash for the Dash?”

DH: “I think you mean, Dash for the Mash. Wasn’t it in New York?”

Me: “Yes, of course. Well, it was at that fair, in one of the buildings where we learned… was it the Amish or the Shakers? I can’t remember which. But a man invented a vacuum cleaner and a woman invented… something that men use… Am I rambling.”

DH: “Of the ten things you tried to say just now, three were probably lies, three were made up and three were true… Crap. What did you do with the other one?”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

After having cleared out our three refrigerators from the week without power, I stated to my husband, "I have a new food rule."

He responded, "Eat anything you want?"

I blinked, then amended, "I have two new food rules: eat anything you want, and don’t keep leftovers in the refrigerator more than two days."

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont -- Plan of Attack

The morning after the storm, our son went to the store for supplies for us, then drove five hours to get here. He gave us a much-needed shot in the arm with his enthusiasm, youth and strength to help with the clean-up.

The following morning, the first thing he said to us was, “So? What's the plan of attack?” My husband responded, “Surrender?”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe -- electrical breakers

While we were without power, my husband turned off the breakers. With two tree through our house, we didn’t know what electrical damage had been done, nor what would happen when the power came back on.

When the power returned six days later, we had to check the breaker switches in the basement, one at a time to find out which rooms they went to. They were marked by a previous owner in “doctor’s handwriting,” i.e., difficult to impossible to read. With cell phones on, my husband and I communicated which lights came on in which part of the house. When he switched the one to the master bedroom and den-home-office, a light flickered, and the breaker immediately switched off by itself.

My husband ascended from the basement chuckling. The breaker switch for the master bedroom and den was labeled as “Bug and Yard.”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont -- kid's tornado observation

A few days after the tornado, I needed to get a haircut. I wanted to do something to make me look pretty. My own hairstylist lives in a town a half an hour away. I didn’t want to spend that much time away from our storm-damaged house, so I went to a cheap local place. The young stylist gave me a cut which looks like she put a bowl over my head, but that’s a different story. Something else amusing happened at this new place.

A father and his six-year-old son were there, getting their haircuts. The kid started talking animatedly about the tornado, and with large gross motor action, showed everyone how “a branch flew right past my cheek.” That was a scary-enough retelling, especially from a child’s point of view. But then he added, “… and this is my favorite cheek.”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe – The Mailbox Story

We came home this morning to find the city taking down our 100’ leaning hickory tree. After we got home and the guys took a mini break, my husband went out and took down our mailbox, which was beneath the tree. He brought it to the house and leaned it up against the railing on our front porch. We figured we’d get skipped for mail today, but with everything going on this past week+ with the tornado, that was not a big concern.

When the hickory guys left, my husband went to put the mailbox back on the post. He noticed the mailbox door ajar. When he looked in, mail was inside it!

So… if we would have put the box up on the roof, would it be delivered up there?

With so much to sigh over during this ordeal, it's the little things which crack us up. Now I just can’t get it out of my head to put a mailbox up on our roof to see what happens.