“A tree fell through my roof”
“What?!” I exclaimed. It had been windy this week, so a few downed branches would be normal, but an entire tree? I thought.
“A tree, you know those tall 80 foot things in our backyard. The windstorm this morning pushed one over and it hit our roof above the family room. I’ve called M to come home from work to have a look at it.”
That was the conversation this morning when I called one of my friends to order some nut free hand made chocolates (I highly recommend the truffles). I assumed the damage wasn’t too catastrophic, not because she didn’t sound worried but because she still took my order of dark chocolate truffles. Mmmmm.
Later this evening M called me to complain that because it nicked a truss, he had to get an engineer to come and declare the truss still fit to support the rest of his remaining roof. I’m not sure if he was complaining because he actually had to go to the effort to get an engineer out to look at his roof, or because, being a Professional Engineer myself, he was seeing if I would show up and stamp his house safe from imminent collapse with my fancy Engineering seal.
“Hey, I got some firewood for you. I just need to remove it from my roof first.”
“What happened?” I asked.
He then started to laugh, recounting his conversation from work.
“So S calls me at work to tell me I need to come home and look at the tree that just hit our roof. I was talking with Counsel at the time so had to excuse myself from our meeting. Being the perceptive lawyer she was picked up on my side of the phone call and gathered what the emergency was, but seemed quiet perplexed by my response.”
“Didn’t your wife just call to tell you a tree fell onto your house?” she queried.
“Yes, so I’ve got to head back home to check it out, then I’ll be back to finish working on the file.”
“But the next question I heard you ask her was ‘Is the TV ok?’”
“Yes,” M admitted, but then started to laugh as he finished up, “and I’m worried about the BBQ as well as it was on the deck by the TV!”
With hockey season starting up I could see his point.
He then continued on with the rest of his story. “The damage wasn’t that bad so I called the arborist to remove the tree and headed back to work. Upon arriving one of my co-workers asked me ‘How my tree-house was’, thinking it was the funniest line of the day.”
I am sure you would have heard the screams of anguish and gnashing of teeth, regardless your location was this morning. Whew. Crisis averted.Man, try explaining that one to the boys at work.
I’ve got some good news and bad news. The good news is that I have a real tree-house for us to congregate and male-bond in now. The bad news is that the tree-house part of the tree I had installed hit the big-screen TV on the way in and no hockey for the rest of the season.
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