Now Playing: (Dont Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult
Topic: Rambling on
I was at work this morning struggling to make it to the halfway point in the day so I could go home sick & I got a text message from miss 16 who was home from school with the diareah & vomiting I was struggling against while at work. The text said 'yeah, I just almost died' I was a little disturbed but knowing her proclivity for theatrics I just texted back 'what are you talking about?'
This first picture shows the t
ree that sheared itself off in the high winds we had in VA today, my house is on a hill with a row of obnoxiously large pine trees behind it, the trees have worried me ever since we moved in (I've been afraid of tall trees falling on me since I was a very small child, my mother attributes this to a very large tree which was struck by lightning behind our house when I was about 2 & 1/2, she says it shook the house & I do remember her leaving me alone in the kitchen while she went out to look at it in the rain- not my earliest memory but a close runner up) & I still hope to have all these large pines taken out eventually due to the hill & the wind coming in from the west, the tree broke at a spit about 10 feet off the ground & fell down the hill. Miss 16 said it shook the house & scared her half to death! I'm not surprised, I always miss this stuff but in a way I'm just as glad that I did, we had a tree fall down at the trailer similar to this (th
ough it was the whole top of the tree) & I was at work for that too, it narrowly missed hitting my trailer & my neighbor's trailer, it fell in such a way that it just hit the ground behind the backs of our trailers if you can imagine! That was actually scarier, this one, due to the hill & the fact that the wind nearly always comes from the west was no question going to fall downhill & away from the house (I have been telling myself this about all the trees behind the house since we moved in back in May of 2005)
You can see from this picture of where the s
hear occoured though, & in the above picture, how it is more than half the thickness of the tree & in the lower picture that the wood is gray not yellow at the break so I think that part of the tree was dead or dying before it fell. the red glow is the setting sun hitting the branches, (ok, maybe it's a tree spirit?) Directly below it is the break. Anyone nearby who want's some good pine wood can have it for the hauling, we don't have a woodstove or fireplace & I've been warned by a couple of people that the chimneys in the house would have to be completley redone before I could have one. (that would also require removing the beesnests from the inner chimney & the squirell nests from the basement one- neither thing is high on my to do list)
Mr 7 had a blast climbing on the top part of the tree among the branches (I remember I loved doing th
at on the couple of occasions when my Father couldn't find enough downed trees in our woods to cut up & would have to actually fell a tree for our firewood) 7 & miss 10 went back out after I came in & played together on the tree for almost an hour - until it was too dark to see & I had to call them in. The vomiting has slowed & with liberal aplications of immodium our Christmas shopping expedition will not be rescheduled, especially since I already had to reshcedule it once due to silliness & madness at work causing me to have to work 8 hours of overtime before sunday (of course, by getting sick I screwed that up!) I couldn't keep down the immodium this morning or I probably could have made it the whole day. I would prefer to go alone & get everyone's shopping taken care of but I can't very well do so, I don't like to leave the kids home on days when I'm home & they're home, instead I intend to go shopping on Tuesday or Wednesday, my days off, while they're at school, finish it all & lock up the shed until a few days before the 'big event'. Tommorow I can at least take care of the kids choosing what they want to give to each other & to me & I may pick up a few small items here & there which I can hide under coats until 16 takes the younger ones to the car & I check out alone. (One definite benefit to going alone on a weekday, the stores are much less crowded) I am not looking forward to the shopping, it's not hard for miss 16, she's an artist so paint, canvasses etc are easy, clothes are always appreciated though I don't always get what she likes exactly. mr 7 is easy too, the hardest thing about shopping for him is how much I can spend, if it's Batman, Spiderman, I
maginext or Magnetix he's all set. Miss 10 however, is at that age where she's too young for makeup, too old for Barbies & Babies, Clothes she gets from family & friends with kids older than her & so I only buy her a few special pieces (& some jeans, it seems there's never enough jeans) I also don't really like to get the kids clothes for Christmas (except 16 because she actually likes them!) it just doesn't seem right.
Going to bed early tonight to rest up for tommorow's shopping barrage, I'm also supposed to do the hair of one of 16's friends who has to be in a wedding tommorow morning. That should be interesting.
