When it rains, it pours...and trees fall down.

So, the last couple of weeks have not been especially great. Last week we were down to only two of us working in the office, and one of us had to be on our mobile unit. That left me to run the office...because I cannot drive a huge RV, nor can I do sonograms.

It was a little crazy.

Monday I found out I had a negative pregnancy test, so this last IUI did not work. John was not in town for that news, and sharing over the phone is not exactly how I wish things would be. Thus, a lot of crying ensued for about two days.

Have I mentioned that it started raining last Friday and it hasn't stopped? We've not had flooding of Biblical proportions or anything, but the rain is steady and continual. Mostly what I want to do is take a nap or curl up on the sofa with a good book or a movie and eat lots of chocolate.

(The eating chocolate might not have anything to do with the rain.)

So, this morning it actually wasn't raining (at the time, it has since commenced) so I felt free to put out our recycling bin. It only gets picked up every other week and we somehow forgot to put it out two weeks ago. So, we create a LOT of recycling in four weeks!

At 7:45 this morning, I put the trash and recycling out. All was quiet. And wet.

Seriously, an hour and a half later I go out to change some laundry in the garage, happen to glance out the windows of the garage door and see this:



Almost fifty years ago, when our little house was built, somebody thought it would be a good idea to plant sycamore trees in the two-foot space between our sidewalk and the street. In the last seven years we've watched the trees bend further and further over the street, hoping they will miraculously remain upright and strong...at least until we move to another house.

Because, let me tell you, we had to cut down one tree already and the price tag is way on up there.

I see the tree laying there across the driveway and, of course, call my dear husband. Who happens to be in another state at the moment. You see, I cannot lift half a tree and I will be needing to leave the house, in my car, which is in the garage, in a matter of hours. Our young and healthy neighbors are all at work by this point, and the ones who are home are either elderly or have cancer. Hmmm.

I decide to waste some time taking pictures of the tree and emailing them to John so he would realize my drama is truly based in reality. While doing so, a guy in a truck comes to point out that half our tree has fallen off into our driveway.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

He then lets me know he works on trees and wonders if I want to hire him to "fix" the tree.

Ummm. No. I am fairly confident I can at least remove the limb somehow from the driveway to extract my vehicle. Plus, the only way I see that we can "fix" the tree will involve removing it. And that will cost thousands. No, thank you.

(Also, somehow I doubted his little pick-up truck and some tree trimmers and a ladder were going to help "fix" the tree much, but I don't know. Maybe he had a chainsaw hidden back in the truck bed somewhere.)

My decision was a good one. Not five minutes later the brush and bulky pick-up comes by. Now, I figure between our neighbor's huge trailer parked across the street, what remains of the sycamore tree, and the large arm that the brush people use to pick up pieces of tree, the limb is in an awkward position for them to get at it.

But they did it! The brush and bulky trash employees saved the day! Thank God this happened on trash day! It is completely worth it to pay tax to the city when they help me take care of things like this.

I'm still not certain what caused half of the tree to fall down. It hasn't been extraordinarily windy. I guess the excessive amount of water falling from the sky might have weighed down the tree, so the slightest breeze pushed it over the edge. Or maybe the trees are just not so healthy leaning over the street like they are.

I think it's supposed to stop raining tomorrow. Maybe life will settle back down when the sun comes out.