"Like Branches After A Storm"

My title is a line from a Ted Kooser poem "Abandoned Farmhouse".  The poem is one of my favorites.  When I saw our back yard on Sunday after Irene had passed through, the first thing I thought of was this particular line.

Relatively, we are unscathed and quite lucky.  We never lost power, although most around us did on Saturday.  Many, including our daughter, will not have power restored until Friday at the earliest as residences are 'down the list' after government agencies and schools.  So she and our grand daughter are staying with us.  On Sunday she and her neighbors had an impromptu block party.  Melissa pulled out her grill and she and her friends cooked everything in their refrigerators and freezers as food was defrosting quickly.  Someone must have seen the smoke and called the fire department, who were good-natured and let all the little ones sit up on the truck and ran the lights and sirens.

After my having a colon re-section and fistula repair, complications, a 5.8 earthquake, daughter Robyn's barn being hit by lightning, her suffering an allergic re-action to sulphur's being released into their well (due to the earthquake), and then Hurricane Irene, I think I can say it's been an interesting summer.  C'mon fall!

Carole King and All That

♫♫We felt the earth move under our♫♫...uh...okay so we were laying down!  It was 5:05 AM after all.  We thought the cat was jumping up on the bed, and off, and on....--what?  She's a big cat!!!  Only the door was closed.  No cat.  We were having an earthquake --  Confirmed later -- as a 3.6 shaker -- it's not our first, we had a series of them around 20 years ago.  So much so the State put a seismograph not too far from our home, but has since removed it. Still disconcerting; still unusual for the DC/Baltimore area. 

Speaking of which, in the middle of this brutally hot summer, our heat pump has died.  As a new unit, it's had three new compressors -- count them 1-2-3!!!  I believe we've got the famous model, the Trane Lemon.  They say it needs yet another new valve that they can't put in until Monday, but frankly, we've had it.  We want a new heat pump!  The company that installed it at least has loaned us a window unit that we've put in the bedroom and we have a unit the girls used in college in our kitchen.  In the words of Rosanna Rosannadanna, "It's always something."