Today at 5:23 p.m. WE GOT INTERNET!  *dancing, dancing, leaping and giving myself a high-five and landing on my face*

It will take me a long time to catch up, but I “needed” to get out a post today. Still partial power in our house (for most likely months), but we also have running water (more dancing). The irony of having the Internet up and running is now being able to see the storms coming this way over the next couple of days. I’m not saying I’m a worry wart, but…

I’ve found this storm and recovery full of contrasts.

Remember how the day before the tornado, I walked about my yard picking up a couple handfuls of 3-4” twigs, and the next day trying to figure out how to pick up the trees from my lawn?

Well… Yesterday, I decided after 11 days without rain, and with most of our yard chopped up by falling timber, tipped root balls and stumps, trucks, bobcats, etc, that I would water this one section out near the road. It looked so pretty this morning. The grass perked right up, a lovely, beautiful, healthy, living green.

This morning we came back from prayer meeting (we can use all the prayer we can get these days), to find a tree crew from a nearby city (Charlotte) taking down our leaning hickory tree.

Backstory: As it was only 3’ from the road, and as I’d “heard” that if a tree is within 30’ of the center of the road, it was city property, last week I’d called our city Tree Foreman to find out if the city would take it down, or if it was our responsibility ($$$). I never heard back from him. I suppose he was a mite busy this past week with a few thousand other trees and the fact that Battle Creek only has four men working in the tree department.

But when we came home this morning, there they were, those wonderful guys from Charlotte,  cutting down that 100’ tree right where I’d watered the night before. (Hopefully I’ll put photos on my FB page tomorrow.) They told us that Battle Creek “had a doozie” for them to remove today. They were professional and skilled and awesome. Their extended chain saw from their fully extended cherry picker only reached about 30’ from the top of the tree.

It was difficult to take my eyes off of them as 200 pound chunks of trunk thunked deep holes into our lawn. I felt rather giddy – not about the bit about our beautiful green lawn with huge dents in it, but the thrill of it 1) falling such a great distance and 2) the sound of the landing and ground shaking even from up near the front porch and 3) not killing anyone in the process. I thought how those little orange hard hats wouldn’t make a hoot of a difference if the cherry-pickin’ guy up in the sky lost control. He didn’t. Everyone was safe. It was still a thrill, although not so much for my poor lawn, nor for my jealous neighbors who drilled me on how I got the city to respond. Of course, I told them the truth: you have to be an hysterical damsel in distress about a city-owned tree, leaning at a forty-five degree angle threatening power lines which were only recently restored. Wish I could have given them more helpful advice. It worked for me.

Now… on to some more normal life of luxury (a home-cooked supper and maybe watch some tv, ’cause, we got tv when we got Internet *dancing*).