so this happened

There were big storms here this morning. I didn't realize how big; I was in my office. 

Taught my class (which went better than I feared), then stopped at Pruett's on the way home because tonight is the CWF salad supper - my plan, because I bought an extra pound of ground beef (it was on sale, and I could not remember if the casserole I made for the potluck YESTERDAY took one or two pounds) was to do "build your own taco salads" - cook up the beef and bring cut up onions and tomatoes and lettuce and chips and cheese  and salsa AND catalina dressing (the traditional one for taco salads where I come from) and maybe some beans

And then I got home with it

Oh no

A huge branch had come down (pecans DO this, I don't like it)

Because I am me, my first thought was "oh no, how will I get in to prepare the food for tonight"

Then I realized I had a more urgent issue. I looked around as much as I could - nothing seemed to have been broken. I grabbed the biggest branch, thinking "well, maybe I can pull it out of the way and get help later" but I was not strong enough to move it.

There is a side door into the house but it has an old lock with a skeleton key and I keep it locked from the inside. All the windows are locked so I couldn't remove a screen and crawl in through a window.

So I stood there, wondering if I could get my little Japanese pruning saw and cut enough to remove it (remember: I'm in a skirt and a nice t-shirt and SANDALS because I taught today. And no way to change clothes or shoes.

So I called someone who might Know A Guy and moments after I got her on the phone, a team of what were probably roofers (Hispanic men, had one of the types of saws they used, had empty boxes from those roof-vent fans in the truck). One guy - probably the one who spoke the most English (and his was pretty good) came and asked me if I wanted to hire them to cut it up and haul it off. $100. Well, I don't know what that kind of work goes for but I figured I was stuck, throwing some money at the problem would help it, the guys were enterprising enough to offer, so okay.

They all hopped out of the truck. One grabbed what looked like a circular saw (which I have seen used for roofing) and started cutting, another one carefully lifted the biggest part of it ("I don't THINK it's hung up anywhere" I not-very-helpfully called out). They got it off the porch, cut it up, loaded it up. One guy combed over the yard picking up the twigs that had fallen; another got a leaf blower and blew the leaves and small twigs off the sidewalk into the street (the streetsweeper comes periodically).

Amazingly, nothing got broken from the branch coming down.

I stood there kind of marveling at that - it fell just right, apparently it missed the roof and even my porch light, not even the pot of petunias on the porch - I wrote out the check (the guy asked me to leave the "to the order of" line blank, which made me a bit nervous, but maybe they're going to sign it over for something else, like towards their rent?). The guy looked at the house and nodded: "You had luck today"

Yes, I agreed, I did. (Not just that my house wasn't damaged; but that they showed up)

"Lots of trees down all over."

"Yeah, I knew it stormed but I didn't realize how bad" And I handed over the check.

He nodded, took it, and said "thank you, God bless you"

And I thanked him - because really, I would probably still be standing out there wondering what to do if they didn't show up.

Sure, they were probably cruising around looking to do this, maybe they couldn't work on roofs today because of the weather, but hey, they're enterprising. And I couldn't have done it myself.

And no damage in the backyard to the big old elm tree - I went and checked