A Tree Fell On My House

(Yeah, I knit. What of it.)

I was absolutely certain from the noise. It was like one of those radio noise-guessing shows where they play a sound and I call up and say ‘that noise was definitely a large branch from a gum tree cracking and breaking away from the main trunk and then crashing down on a corrugated iron verandah, crushing it’ and then win ten thousand dollars for being spot on, except instead of ten thousand dollars I just got a mildly impressed husband and a crushed verandah.

Our toddler, who routinely wakes up at 2-3am and demands someone join her in the living room for a baby shark rave, slept through it. Because toddler.

We poked around with a torch for a bit, and when we were pretty sure that, yep, the verandah had been crushed by a tree, but the house itself was basically okay and we would be safe inside it, went back to bed because, I mean, it was midnight. Nothing to be done about 1/3^rd of a pretty impressive tree on your verandah at midnight.

I zoomed through various shock stages in a mere hour. The shortest stage maybe lasted a minute the longest probably about ten.

Dissociating:

Crying:

Optimism:

Joking:

Dramatic story telling:

… with a side dish of unexpected revalations.

Ravishing hunger:

Finishing up with complete non-optional unconsciousness:

My partner, meanwhile, fizzed from the adrenaline and couldn’t sleep until 5am or something ridiculous, at which point our toddler woke up. Because toddler.

In the light of morning we confirmed the diagnosis.

Insurance dropped by for a photoshoot, since they operate on the Pics Or It Didn’t Happen system.

And we got it cleaned up.

And basically (if you don’t count the background grind of insurance waiting on the assessor report, processing the report, missing key things, re-assessing those key things, everyone relevant going on leave, processing the report again, still missing things, assessing these things, processing the report etc) nothing has happened for several months. We still have half a verandah jury rigged to not fall down more, no clothesline, a shed we had to break into by angle grinding the door because the tin got a crushed in the exact worst place, and a tarp strung up above the wooden laundry door to protect it from the rain.

But we’re loving the extra natural light.