I sat and practiced for a while, then graded. (No piano today as it turns out; there's flooding in the area and for a while my street was flooded; I just told my teacher to get home safely).
I heard a noise. As I said on Twitter - "I hope that wasn't another branch coming down on my roof"
That is what we call a monkey's-paw wish. It didn't come down on my roof, but rather my drive, right in front of my garage door. (Fortunately, it turns out, my car was down at the OTHER end of the drive).
I just stood and looked at it. Contemplated calling the tree guy again, but you know? I've spent too much money on joyless maintenance this month. So I thought: maybe I can haul it to the street myself, and then either call one of the guys from church who has land and ask him if he wants wood for a bonfire, or see if the city will haul it off for me.
But it was too big.
Ugh. Once again I am a self-rescuing princess, which is something that gets really, really, really old. I sighed, and opened the garage, and got my little Japanese folding hand saw (which is an excellent tool and is the best saw I have ever owned) and started cutting the side branches off. (Yes, it would have been easier to call someone who had a chain saw, but I didn't know anyone who loves me enough to come out on a rainy Friday afternoon, so I just did it myself*)
(*I guess that means I love myself enough to go out on a rainy Friday afternoon and do it with a hand saw. So, yay me? I guess?)
Hauled the bits down to the curb. One of them was still *almost* too big, but when you're solo, all you can do is plant your feet and make a bit more effort. (Story of my life).
I might call the DA's husband a bit later to see if he knows of someone who could haul it off; he seems to have a lot of those sort of connections.
But anyway. I get very tired of this sort of thing, having random stuff figuratively fall on my head, and having to figure out how to deal with it all alone and without help. Oh, I deal with it, but it makes me sad to
Also, there was no water in my building this afternoon; after I walked out of class one of my colleagues said "There's no water in the labs!" and apparently there was a large water main break. And wow, the city guys got a terrible day to deal with this (So: I guess someone is having a worse day than I am). I'm wondering if they even get it fixed today and maybe this is a message from God or the Universe or someone that I'm pushing myself too hard and instead of going in tomorrow and trying to work on research (which would require a small amount of water, but more importantly, not having functional bathrooms would be an issue if I was over there more than a half-hour or so) maybe I should take tomorrow off? The work will wait for me.
But, cripes. I am ready to stop putting out small fires, and I am ready for bad things, small and large, to stop happening. In the grand scheme of things this was really a minuscule thing but it interrupted my afternoon and took some energy to deal with.
And yeah, now I'm just tired and sad and am once again reminded of how all so often when things go wrong, I have to deal with it all on my own with no help. I mean, yeah, I get that I should reframe it as "look at how capable I am, I can do this myself" but sometimes it would be really nice to have help. And it takes time I don't really have.
Back to grading, I guess.
I could really use a hug and someone to fix my dinner for me but I'm not going to get either of those things. (I have food on hand I can fix, but it would be nice to stay sitting here grading while it's fixed FOR me.)
1 comment:
I called National Grid to trim branches in front of our house, and they did. But only for their lines.
I called the city of Albany to have them cut the remainder of the branches, which are growing between the lines. There's a long wait time. Prediction: I will lose power this winter because the weight of the snow-covered tree branches will take down one or more power lines.
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