Falling Trees

Happy 77th Gloria!!

I was up around 730a and still contending with that nagging dry cough. Ugh!  It was a cloudy start, but cleared up quickly. I started coffee then completed exercises. Mindy called for me to come get Eiknarf then went back to sleep. I walked Eiknarf around 800a.

On our walk back towards the house I heard a loud cracking sound coming from the neighbors trees. Right in front of my eyes I saw a huge branch fall and crash to the ground. Several others were out walking their dogs at the same time and heard the crash, too. I was the only one who actually saw it. At the time I wasn’t sure if the branch hit his shed or not. I knew it was close. From the sidewalk, my view was somewhat obscured by other trees. I hustled back home, let Eiknarf loose, grabbed my camera, then headed over to John’s to assess the damage.

Turns out, the damage to his property was minimal. Somehow the branch missed both the house and his shed. What fell was about 10-12” in diameter and about 20’ long. John wasn’t out. Not sure if they heard it or not, but it made an awfully loud crashing sound.

I headed back home where I spent time out in the back yard picking up fallen leaf debris then toted it back to the compost pile. Much to my dismay, I discovered that we had a a large branch down too. Ours fell on the tree house. It was about 6” in diameter and about 20’ long. It fell from directly above the actual house portion but somehow missed the roof and landed across the tree house deck railing. I climbed up the ladder to assess the damage and hopefully push it completely free from the railing. But while pushing it off, the branch fell vertically effectively blocking the ladder’s path down. Crap!

I thought I might have to jump off to get down. I decided to try the ladder while pushing the branch aside at the same time. Thankfully, that worked. I’d have to fully free up and cut the branch away later.

I headed off on my run before 9a. Mindy was still asleep. Unlike most other Saturdays, I ran the full 4.1 mile track. Felt good, though it was another steamy one.

Mindy was still asleep when I got back home. She got up some time after 10a while I was playing around on the PC. We spent a little time together out on the deck. I asked Mindy if she planned on attending yoga class. At first she said she wasn’t sure, but quickly changed her tune and committed 100%.  I’d need to run her to the Honda first.

While Mindy readied for yoga, I updated my blog from the previous week. I’m thinking it was 1115a when we left to fetch the Honda. We took the BM’er, Mindy’s first such ride in a long, long time. I dropped Mindy at the Honda. Then, after making sure she was good to go, I headed north up Grandview Avenue
towards the Grandview Strader’s. 

At Strader’s I was hoping to find healthy climbing rose bushes. I walked their relatively small outdoor greenhouse but found no roses. No dice. I headed for home. Along my drive I decided to get the Trooper keys and drive to the Mill Run Lowe’s to pick-up the 2”X4”s I’d need to make the deck bench supports. Too, I’d look to see if they had healthy climbing roses in their garden center.

The Trooper’s transmission slipped a little at the outset of my drive there. It only happened once. Yikes! I entered through the garden center and quickly found a few climbing roses. I picked a very healthy dark pink climbing rose bush. They had a couple yellow ones too. My preference would’ve been deep red, but they had none.

Inside, I headed to the opposite end of the store where I fetched three 8’treated 2”X4”s. I headed home and carried the rose bush and lumber to the deck. I didn’t plan on doing any project work since we needed to leave for Gloria’s b-day party around 2p. With the time I had, I decided to water and fertilize most of our flowers.

I watered all the flowers with the hose then used a watering pail with the Miracle Grow to feed them. That proved much more efficient than using an entire bag with the hose adapter.

Mindy got home around 1pm. After yoga, she stopped and bought a fruit tray for the b-day party. Over the next hour both of us showered and dressed. This would be our last hour at home without the kids. As we understood it, they were packing up and heading home from the Outer Banks as of 5am that morning. Expected to be back around 5pm. We planned to pick them up on our way home from Craig’s place.

We needed to pick-up Gloria around 215p. To that end, we left the house just after 2p. Mindy wanted to make a quick stop for gas at the Circle K. The gas pumps weren’t working properly. Wouldn’t accept her card. Wasted at least five minutes screwing around with that. Mindy was getting antsy. We ended up heading just up the road to the Shell just south of the freeway. No problems there. We were on our way to Gloria’s by 225p. Mindy seemed calmer once we were on our way. I asked Mindy if she wanted to call her mom to let her know we were on our way. She didn’t.

We picked Gloria up around 230p. We wished her a happy birthday then headed north to brother Craig’s. It took about 25-30 minutes to get there. It’s a fairly long haul. I could only laugh when Gloria shared that no one should live more than ten miles away. From who was the first question that first popped into my mind. I kept my thoughts to myself.

We arrived just after 3pm. It was a nice afternoon, about 82 and sunny. The forecast called for a chance of rain but there didn’t appear to be a real threat in the near future. We visited and snacked for about an hour before I asked Mindy to phone Jimaken to check  o their whereabouts. My thinking was, if they were close, we’d go ahead and pick them up before eating dinner that way they could see the family too.  Turns out, they were already near Canal Winchester. I suggested that I would go fetch them. Mindy liked that, but  decided to ride along. I guessed that we would arrive at Jimaken’s place at about the same time.

We stayed southbound on Liberty Rd deciding to avoid Sawmill all together. Neither of us were too familiar going that way, but knew we could ultimately get to where we needed to go. We ended up dumping out on

Bethel Rd , a few miles east of Jim’s place. No biggie. They were already there and waiting for us. Both kids looked super tired, and neither was too enthused about driving back to Craig’s to see the family. They’d just spent 12 hours in a car. They wanted to go home and rest.

We headed back to Craig’s via Sawmill. Traffic was much heavier than it was earlier. Don’t think we made it back until 515-530p. As expected, the others had already eaten. We went ahead and made ourselves plates of food. I had a cheeseburger. And while I started on a beer (a Bud Light) before we left, I opted to stay with water for the duration of the afternoon. By the way, Bella was as brown as a berry. Jacob had a tan too, but next to Bella he looked pail.

Not long after we finished eating it was time to sing and have b-day cake. I had ‘stupid’ white cake. After cake it was time for Gloria to open her gifts. There were a couple Gloriaisms uttered during the gift opening ceremony, none, I am certain, meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. J

Jacob, Joe-Joe and I tossed the Frisbee I thought to bring along for about 20-30 minutes. It was fun. Around 7p Mindy & I agreed to pack up for home. The kids were super tired and eager to get home to see their dog.

We opted to take Powell Rd to Riverside Dr and south. It was a pretty drive and a lovely evening. Guessing it was near 745p when we finally arrived home. Eiknarf hadn’t been out since 8a that morning. She was anxiously awaiting our arrival and took care of business in a hurry. It didn’t take long for the kids to get their second wind and run off to find and play with their friends. Within 20 minutes they were over at Emily & Evans playing baseball with Mike and Kenny.

Mindy and I walked down too. Mindy said she was ready to end our successive nights of partying. I poured an IPA, this my last night to party before returning to work. The kids were having fun. Minus Mike & Julie Mullins, it was the entire Myrtle Beach gang. As darkness set in we walked to Chrissy & Kenny’s place for pizza. Mindy & I didn’t plan to eat any, but our kids did. Mindy diverted home to get some cash to contribute on their behalf. During our brief visit, we chatted about the logistics of our fast approaching trip.

Mindy headed home with the kids about 15 minutes ahead of me. She called twice in the next ten minutes to ask me to come home and tuck in the kids. Not wanting to disappoint, I headed for home. Little did I realize at the time, but I left my brand new Great Lakes pint glass behind. At the current rate at which I’m leaving glasses behind, Chrissy will have my entire collection by summer’s end.  :)

Bella was anxiously awaiting my arrival home. I tucked her in. She was happy to be home and sleeping in her own bed. As usual, she asked me to stay up a while longer. I headed downstairs and played around on the PC for a while. I joined Mindy in bed around 11pm.