I cannot fall into a deep sleep Tuesday night until I see that the radar will be relatively clear for a few hours. I used to like the sound of rain falling while I slept, but I don't care for it as much anymore, so my bedtime extends after 1:00 a.m.
When I wake up in the morning, the air is still thick and soupy. I don't open the windows yet, but I do open the blinds. As I get to the spare room, my converted office, I spin the blinds open and ... stare. The view to the neighbor's backyard is suddenly wide open, clearer than it is during the leafless winter. Jutting out of the ground is the ripped open trunk of a tree, it's entire upper half on the ground in front of it.For all the ribbing I take today for admitting I sat (fully clothed) in the bathtub for a few minutes during the storm's fury, the tree that no longer is a tree stood twenty feet from where I was hunkering down for safety while the house was shaking. The strange part: This is not the first tree to be taken down by bursts of unusual wind. Two years ago during a similar but more intense storm, a microburst cut a swath miles long, passed right over the house, and took out the tree next to today's dead deciduous soldier.
The tree is not what scares me today, though. What scares me is that my office could've been hit. The tree could have come right through the roof or window of the back room and sucked all of my important papers to oblivion. Everything is back there -- birth certificates, paperbacks, all of my school curriculum files that came home with me rather than risk them getting lost during our temporary move to the old high school for a year, and, most frustrating of all, my thesis.Today I spend the day, the entire day, working on the piles in my office. I do make some progress, including dumping two bags worth of paperwork. But most of it just ends up in a more organized pile. I'm having company Friday, so I'll deal with it next week. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
I guess for an excitable storm person like me, the only thing more depressing than sitting near a tree that takes flight with the windy storm is watching the last seven months of sweat and agita go flying out a gaping hole in the wall, never to been seen again. Losing all that work?
Now, THAT is scary.
