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Remember how I was going to hide in my burrow and recuperate for the next few weeks?

Monday morning, my sister Prudence got a call from her catsitter. One of those microburst mini-tornado thingies touched down in Pru's neighborhood, knocking trees into houses all over the block. Two very large trees fell through Pru's roof, and a third tree was struck by lightning and split in half, and it just hasn't caught on yet that it's destined to fall through the living room windows. The baby's room was pretty much demolished, so we were all grateful to the universe that Pru, Zach, and Kate were ten hours away when the storm hit.

Ten hours back south they drove, and around dinnertime my father's cellphone started ringing in the arrival of digital photos of the wreckage. If you want to see a roof more completely covered with greenery, you'll have to watch the Hobbiton scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring to find it. One of the tree trunks split the back of the house open down to the bottom of the bathroom window. We couldn't help it, we all had the song stuck in our heads for hours.

Now the cat's found, the insurance adjuster is called, and moving day is Saturday. Down Dan and I will drive again, this time for a sort of reverse barn raising.

In one of those moments of sublime narcissism I get from time to time, I thought to myself, Look what desperate lengths the universe is willing to go to, to keep me on the road. This new mess is so far out there, it's beyond daunting, beyond annoying, well into absurd, with intermittent bouts of just plain funny.

Here I am at home, for more laundry, more drying out of damp sleeping bags, more sprinting through a week's worth of student appointments in two days while not daring to unpack entirely. Somehow in the middle of this, I'm determined to get up to NYC to Sloan-Kettering and see Geo while he's in the ICU. Bless [livejournal.com profile] sleepymaggie, who agreed to look after my cat some more, even though I asked her while I was excessively caffeinated (even by my standards of caffeination) and car crazy from six hours of driving home.

Despite everything, Part 1 of the big book is considerably tightened up. I'm only a little way into tightening up Part 2, but I'll be done with that and with Bob before I drive to Rockville Friday. Even now, I'm optimistic about fixing up the chaos in Parts 3 and 4 by the end of the month.

Date: 2006-07-05 06:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vgnwtch.livejournal.com
Holy crap! What a nightmare! All the best to your family; and you look after yourself, too.

:::Hug:::

*unbelievable* (a la fifth element)

Date: 2006-07-05 03:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kistha.livejournal.com
May things become seriously less hectic for you.

Wow!

Date: 2006-07-05 05:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jaime-sama.livejournal.com
Thank goodness your sister and family are ok! What a mess.

I'm amazed and impressed that any writing-type work is getting done at all! Good grief.

Yow!

Date: 2006-07-11 12:35 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
This is a turning out to be a rather intense summer for you. I'm glad your family is ok. Want to try to come by while you're in NYC?
Dianne

Re: Yow!

Date: 2006-07-11 12:38 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Forgot to add: We have a futon you could use if you want to stay in NYC overnight to avoid over-caffeinated over-tired driving. (There was just a really nasty accident in the Bronx, making me particularly sensitive to car related risks.)

Dianne

Re: Yow!

Date: 2006-07-11 05:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dr-pretentious.livejournal.com
Thank you! I will probably be in NYC this Wednesday or this Friday, depending on when and whether Geo's doing well enough to have visitors who aren't immediate family. I'm hoping to come in next Wednesday, too, to combine a hospital visit with a reading (http://www.lcrw.net/kgb/) I want to go to. I generally try to stick to trains for getting into and out of NYC--even at my most alert, I find driving in Manhattan to be problematic--so I probably won't be in need of crash space. Company over dinner and/or at the reading, though, would be very welcome.

Re: Yow!

Date: 2006-07-11 11:49 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Cool. I'll email you my cell phone so you can let me know when you're going to be around. Driving in NYC--yech! Over the weekend there was a car crash that blocked off an entire freeway and killed 5 people. Confirms my feeling that driving in a city this crowded is foolish at best.

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