It's raining trees..

So.. it's been a few days.

Since I know you missed me, I'll explain.

Last week, we lost our power. I'm not a tough-it-out kind of girl (excluding reproductive issues, of course), so when the temperature in my house started creeping into 'warm' after four hours, I called my mama and we headed to the blessed air conditioned-ness of my parents' house.

I considered going home the next day, but I could not get anyone to answer my very important question. Is the power back on in my area yet? (at the time, we had been told that it was a blown transformer, and could be either a couple of hours or a couple of days.. one of which was acceptable, the other, not so much).

So I decided to stay a second day. That, and there was that whole tropical storm thing going on. I've got a gigantic, humongo oak in my front yard. It's about four feet across (not around, across), and 40 or so feet tall. It is located approximately 8 feet from my house. Freaks me out every storm. I was pretty sure that my peace of mind would be impaired were I to go home before the storm played out.

In retrospect, that was maybe not such a hot idea. My parents are lacking a humongo oak, but they make up in quantity what they lack in quality. In other words, their back yard is sort of a mini-forest. In the midst of the first wave of what turned out to be a lot of rain with little else, I noticed that one of the trees in the back yard was sort of leaning towards the house... so I called my mother at work* to ask her if this was normal. My mother, who is the least paranoid person I know first asks "is it the tree closest to the garage, because that one's been leaning since Isabel in 2003". I assure her that this is a different tree - I am aware of the leaning tree of Isabel; it's the reason I don't hang out in that part of her house when it's windy.. just in case. So then she says "don't worry - when they fall, it's not fast, it's sort of slow motion, you'll have time to move. And they're thin trees, the last one that fell on the house didn't even make a loud bang" ..

When they fall? And hey, ma, thanks for the reminder that this wouldn't be the first time your house has played catcher to the foliage. By the time I got off the phone with her, I was feeling so much better that my hands were shaking. G distracted me by insisting we stack up the Jenga-blocks. As a side note, I'd just like to say: If you are ever in a position to stack blocks with a three-year-old, make sure you are paranoid and shaking at the start of the game. It will put you on the same level and seriously reduce his frustration level.

In the end, the storm did not do any significant damage either here or at my parents' house**.

It did, however, damage my ability to blog.

I could not remember my username OR password. And I wasn't sure I wanted my blog history on the 'rents computer. I was able to access my mail, and my bloglines, but not my blog.

Strangely, once I was home, at my own computer, and not worried about whatever footprints I may be leaving, the username and password just flew off my fingers without a second thought.

So... there may never be any remote blogging going on here. Good thing I'm practically a hermit.





*do not ever let anyone tell you that realtors do not work hard. my mother spent half a tropical storm working, moving files to higher ground, showing property (yes, really) and fielding calls from clients. she spent the second half on the phone attempting to quell a legal entanglement involving a client.

**unless you believe my child, who was convinced that every leaf or twig that fell was, indeed, a "tree". According to G, there were several hundred trees down in our yard alone.