In which she discusses windstorms with the Universe

It went something like this:

*ring ring*

Hello?

Hey, Universe. It’s DaniGirl.

DaniGirl! Always a pleasure to hear from you. How are you enjoying your first spring in the new house?

Oh, it’s been gorgeous. There’s daffodils and crocuses, the boys love playing in the yard, and the porch is beyond awesome.

I’m so happy to hear that. I heard you dodged a bullet on that summer water ban issue, too.

Did we ever! As a matter of fact, that’s why I’m calling.

Oh really? Why is that?

Well, I know you have a bit of an, um, odd sense of humour, and I was wondering if maybe you heard me talking about how happy I was to be living out here in Manotick on well water for most of yesterday and today.

Well, yes, I may have heard you. Why do you ask?

Yeah, it’s about that insane windstorm yesterday. The wind was gusting up to 100 km/h here for a couple of hours. Did you know that once they get up to 120 km/h they’re hurricane force winds? It was quite brutal.

There was a lot of damage all around Ottawa, wasn’t there? Don’t tell me your house was damaged?

No, not really. There’s this chimney cap that blew off, and I’m a little worried about that. I’m afraid that if it rains, we’ll get moisture in the walls. And you know, it was just yesterday that we finally laid the carpet in Tristan’s room following the whole mould debacle. Did I even tell you about the leak in the opposite side of the house we had during that big spring melt back in March? So yeah, I’m a little twitchy about potential moisture issues.

I can’t say I blame you. So what are you doing?

Oh, a guy is coming by today to look at it, so I think we’re okay. The big damage, though, was the tree.

The tree?

Yeah, one of the giant old beauties in the back yard. It tipped clean over. It must have been at least 40 years old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were 50 or 75 feet tall. This is what it looks like now.

20110429-052411.jpg

Wow, DaniGirl, the poor old tree. It didn’t fall on the house did it?

Nope. If it had fallen in the exact opposite direction, it would have crashed through Lucas’s bedroom. If it had fallen 90 degrees to the right, it would have taken out our play structure. But, at first glance, I was pretty relieved to see it only took out some cedar hedges — and it may have landed on my back neighbour’s garden.

Oy, that’s a hell of a way to introduce yourself to the neighbours!

Isn’t it? And that’s exactly what I did, with three boys in tow because Beloved was blissfully oblivious to all the damage at an event for his work. We walked around and I was going to knock on the door when I took a peek in the yard to see how the tree looked from their side. I noticed that it actually cut across the bottom corner of their yard and looked like the top might be resting in their next-door neighbour’s yard.

Pretty tall tree, eh?

No kidding. So I went next door, and my jaw dropped open. This is what I saw.

Holy crap, DaniGirl!

Yeah, that’s what I said. And they weren’t even home so I had to leave a note in their mailbox. What a mess!

I heard there were a lot of trees down in Manotick.

It’s just crazy. Two houses down from all this, a humongous Blue Spruce tipped over and took out the hydro line for the whole street. One block over, another tree fell on someone’s minivan. And there’s a little pocket park with a wooded area just around the corner, it looks like carnage in there, I’m sure more than a half-dozen trees down. And this — remember this gorgeous old silo that’s entranced me since we moved to Manotick?

18:365 Old Barn

This comment was posted on one of my other pictures of it:

Dani, I live just across the street from the Silo, It has fallen down in the last hour, due to the wind storm. 3:30 April 28th.

And this is what it looks like today.

Oh, that’s a shame, I’m sorry to see that. It was a brutal storm. In the end, you were pretty lucky.

Yeah, I did want to say thank you for that. I’m heartbroken to lose that beautiful tree — it was supposed to be my clothesline tree! — and it will be a bit of trouble to get everything back to normal again, but oh my god, it could have been so much worse.

Nobody was hurt, at least.

Exactly. Nobody was hurt, and if there’s nothing more than a dribbling of rain today, we’ll be okay with the naked chimney. I wanted to mention, though, I did notice that every time you wreak some minor disaster on the house, you make sure to wreak much larger disasters out there in the world. Like the day in March when we had the water leaking in the basement was the same day the tsunami happened in Japan, and all Beloved and I could say to each other was “A little water in the basement is nothing compared to that.” And today, thinking about what could have happened — oh my god, can you imagine if that treehouse had blown away? Tristan would have packed his bags and moved back to Barrhaven!

Heh, yes, I did step in and give it a little bit of a buffer from the worst of it. I figured poor Tristan has been through enough, losing the room of his own that was promised to him for the last six months.

Yes, well, thanks for that, Universe. But I gotta ask, are you on the city’s payroll or what?

Pardon me?

Yeah, I was thinking, it’s mighty darn convenient that this unprecedented wind storm blew through and got everybody’s attention diverted from the Barrhaven/Manotick/Riverside South summer water ban in a big hurry. You have anything to do with that, maybe?

I’ll never tell, DaniGirl.

Yeah, fair enough. Okay, well, thanks again for watching out for the treehouse, and the house. Um, not necessarily in that order.

My pleasure, DaniGirl. Take care.

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

6 thoughts on “In which she discusses windstorms with the Universe”

  1. Thank Goodness you are all okay (and your house and tree house!). While watching everything falling down around us I couldn’t help but feel sad for those in the Midwest US who are struggling after the nasty tornadoes that hit them. We are so so lucky. Really. Take Care.

  2. There for but the grace of God go I……I think most of us were so lucky yesterday..karma?

  3. Excellent post! I LOVE your “universe” pieces.

    Sorry that there was minor damage, but glad to hear that you did not have major damage. The photo of barn minus silo is just haunting.

  4. Eep! You have been through the RINGER. I hope you have an extremely uneventful summer, because I think you’ve earned it.

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