A straight line…

…down our street!

Last Saturday night, straight line winds must have come down our street.

I was lying across the bed sending someone a message when, all of a sudden, the windows in the bedroom sounded like they were coming in! By the time I got up off of the bed, the power started going out. It went off for a few seconds, came back on for a few seconds (longer than it was off), went off again for a few seconds, came back on again for a few seconds (again, longer than it was off), and then it went off and stayed off. Unfortunately, my Mom was in the shower when the power went off and she still had soap in her hair! So…I went outside to her vehicle (using our little wimpy flashlight that won’t stay on) and got the LED flashlight and brought it to her so she could finish her shower. When I walked out on the porch, I saw that the metal dog sculpture/flower pot had been blown completely off the porch. I rescued the dog and laid it under the table on the porch, hoping it wouldn’t get blown away again.

Poor dog:(

I remembered that we had an LED camping lantern so I took the “wimpy flashlight” and found the camping lantern.

Thank God for the bright LED lights of this camping lantern!

Not long before all of this happened, my Mom and I had just gotten home from shopping. I had just bought myself a raincoat…and Thank God I did! I got to wear it within hours of buying it:) I got to break it in well! So, donning my rainboots and new raincoat, I went outside to see if any damage was done….and, in the street, in front of our house, there was a HUGE tree limb laying in the road.

huge tree limb

Seeing this, and after taking the picture, I went across the street to my grandmother’s house to see if everything was fine at her house. The only things amiss at her house were two potted plants that were not in their original locations. The small potted plant from her porch was now on the sidewalk in front of her porch steps and the entire plant, roots and all, were outside of the pot. I “re-potted” the plant and put it where it belong. The huge potted plant beside her porch was blown over but luckily I didn’t have to re-pot it. I just sat it back in the upright position. Now, after having re-potted a plant, re-locating two plants in the pouring rain, and making sure her car was okay (the tree limb wasn’t far from her car sitting in the driveway), I went back across the street to my house.

Since the power was out, the air conditioners weren’t on….so it was getting a little hot inside the house. We decided it was cooler outside so we sat on the porch (which is also what all of the neighbors were doing). It was still raining so the rain was blowing in on us. We went inside but soon came back out because it was better to get a little wet from the rain than to be hot inside the house. While we were outside the second time, the power came back on….THANK GOD!…and the rain had almost stopped.

Once I was back inside, I suddenly noticed that there were flashing lights on the other side of the blinds. When I looked out, there was a city truck and a bulldozer in front of the house. The workers were there to get the huge limb out of the road. They pushed it halfway down the block to a vacant lot….and it is still there. Apparently, there were tons of limbs down all over town so they were in quite a hurry. The following pictures show the limb being moved.

 After the tree limb was moved, I noticed that the neighbors across the street had some damage to one of their cars (the one that doesn’t run half the time). The limb broke the windshield and knocked the grill off of the car. Luckily, the car that they drive all the time wasn’t where it is normally parked because the biggest and heaviest part of the limb would have totalled the car.

So, how exciting was your Saturday night?! 🙂