Oy! A Scary Day!

My goddess! As if the first round of storms passing through this morning between 9 and noon weren't bad enough, now I'm underneath a super-cell at 8:30 p.m. The rain has nowhere to go, the ground is totally saturated and I've got ponds in my backyard. Fortunately, my power has stayed on and - so far - the basement has remained miraculously dry! I believe Greenfield, where I live, has received something like 9 plus inches over the last 2 days, and it's forecasted to rain through Wednesday. Right now I'm getting hammered again - lots of thunder and lightning and I should shut down -- but you know what, after dodging tornado warnings in the basement yesterday and cleaning up from the tree fire today (more about that below), I'm feeling pretty damn jaded at the moment, so screw it! If Lighting Wants To Strike This Computer, Go Right Ahead - And I'll Send Persephone After You, Bugger! Aside from very worrisome reports of 200 year old trees along Lake Drive being torn out of the ground by their roots earlier today (when the first micro-burst winds came through) and Lake Drive being closed down (that's the high rent district - I live very far far away from there...) miraculously once again we had no deaths, no injuries reported (knock on wood). It just so happens that I have an 80 foot tall Chinese Elm tree hovering over my house in the back yard. Let me tell you, this tree survived the wicked 100 mile per hour downburst straight-line winds in storms at the end of May, 1998 and the end of May, 1999. So this is nothing new - except the tree is much taller now, and regularly sheds branches during rain and shine at the slightest provocation. Which leads me to today's tree incident - the tree fire! EEK! Sometime during the fury of this morning's storm blowing over the house on its eastward trek toward Lake Michigan, a large branch broke off of the giant Chinese Elm and crashed down on the wires leading from the power pole at the north end of my lot. It's rather close to the house - about 18 feet maybe from my kitchen window. Power lines run across the yard to the next power pole on the other side of my neighbor's yard to the south. I've gotten so used to them, I hardly even see them there anymore, but there are 7 separate wires, some as thick as my wrist, running from that north pole across the yard south to the next pole over. They run in a hierarchy from really thin (at the far top, I can hardly make it out) to the three middle "wires" which are thick, and the bottom three "wires" which are VERY thick bundles of who knows what, one of which was somehow mysteriously cut, I noticed it a few weeks ago when I got home from work one night. The end of it is now dangling against the pole at the end of my yard. Calling the electric company is useless. They say it's not their wire. So who's fricking wire is it? They don't come with labels, you know! Okay - back to the tree fire! The first tree fire I've ever had. About 20 minutes after the first storm of the day passed through this morning, I opened up the patio door and stepped out to see what the latest damage was. Yep, the nature-formed swimming pool in the northeast corner of the yard was back and yep, lots of downed twigs and smaller branches from my mini-forest, but overall things looked okay. I threw some peanuts out for the squirrels and an extra ration of seeds and nuts for the birds, cuz their regular feeding spot was under about a foot of water. So, as I turn about to go back into the house, I notice sparks and "arcing" from the power pole, near its top. Seems a branch from the Chinese Elm had crashed down onto the second tier of wires, and it was on fire, and sparks, lots of smoke and etc. were issuing forth from whatever the hell is up there - all kinds of electric contraptions and connections, I have no idea what they are. I nearly have a heart attack seeing this, and then I pull myself together, run into the house and pull out the phone book to look up the emergency number for the electric company. I find it, and with trembling fingers punch it in - to get one of those DAMN electronic voice things. Goddess, I hate those those electronic voice things. So, I have to select an option - after first listening to a recording about the horrid weather we've been having lately (yeah, like I didn't know) and how many downed wires there are, and how our local electric company wants to serve us, but it will be at least a day before anyone will answer the telephone blah blah blah. After that ends, I have to listen to a list of options and choose one. None of the options fits my situation: I do not have a downed wire, I do not have a power outage, I am not reporting someone else's power outage. What I have is a tree branch on fire on top of a wire that has not fallen (yet). So, which option do I choose? Finally, I get to the bottom of the list and get to "other". So I hit "other" and have to speak clearly and loudly into the phone which is, supposedly (somehow) translating my English language into something that the telephone understands (probably a call center in Myanmar). By this point my heart is beating about 200 a minute and I'm hyperventilating and scared to death the whole damn thing is going to fall into my house and set me on fire! EEK! The telephone says "your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. At this time, we estimate that you call will be answered in five minutes." I hang up the fricking phone and dial 911. The very first time in my life I ever dialed 911. My 911 operator (Chuck), was so nice. We evidently have this new-fangled system so he knew instantly my address and after I'd said (as calmly as I could, with panic tears now gushing from my eyes) that I had a power situation with a tree branch on fire on top of a power wire just outside my house, Chuck had a fire truck to my house in less than 7 minutes. The fire guys calmed me down and sat on my chairs on the deck until the electric company came much later. I invited them to come through the house (the shortest path from front yard to back yard), but they said they had muddy boots (fire guys with manners) and so I led them through the rain to the side gate and tried to get it open against an uber-growth of day lilies that cover half the walkway and block the path. After struggling for a little, the fire guys climb over the fence. LOL! I run back up the walk to the front porch, into the house and to the patio door at the dinette in the back of the house. The fire guys call for the back-up right away, since they were not equipped to deal with this particular type of fire (which by that point was smoking and arcing/sparking but no longer with flames, thank Goddess, because of all the wet) and I heard the dispatcher say over one of their walkie-talkies that the electric company would be here in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes stretched into 90 minutes, but eventually a guy showed up with these long thingies to cut down branches and the fire guys left. Nice guys, thank you Greenfield fire guys. I thought, I must be dreaming, cuz how is this electric company guy with the cut down thingies going to get that branch off of the wire (I'd say it was about 25 feet overhead, maybe even higher), put out the smoke and sizzling noise (that was scary, let me tell you, that sizzling, "z z z z z z z z" noise!) and do whatever else needed to be done? He walks past the deck and I step out and he says "Nice morning, heh?" LOL! I say "Yah, watch out for the tree on fire." He says (just like the fire guys earlier), "Please go about your daily business, ma'am." So I go back into the house. So, there I am, faking washing dishes at the sink which has a double window above it overlooking the backyard, and I'm watching the electric company guy do his thing with the cutting thingies. I then started cleaning the kitchen, just for an excuse to stay near the window - I didn't want to look like I was spying, after all... I wash the rust off the bottom of the fridge, I scrub the floor - by hand - I start washing the cabinets dors. Somewhere when I was away from the window for a microsecond (probably scrubbing a corner of the floor under the kitchen cabinets), he brings down the offending burnt branch with the cutting thingies (somewhere along the line he produced TWO cutting thingies). All I know is, the next time I looked out the window, the cutting thingies are telescoped back down into 10 foot poles with saws on the end, and he's climbing over the fence to go back to his truck. The fire was out - but he didn't climb up the pole to check the electric thing up there that was causing the arcing/sparking and set the tree on fire. But - as no more fires have show up, he must have known what he was doing. I was left to clean-up all of the cut-down branches and the burnt-up branches from the tree fire. I've got a pile of cut-off branches about a foot high - and that does not include the really big branch that caused all of the problemes in the first place. That branch is upside down below the retaining wall the shelters part of the giant Chinese Elm, up against the fence. It's bigger than I am. It should be an interesting exercise trying to get that out to the curb by Tuesday when the yard waste disposal people can haul it away - if I can somehow first manage to get it cut into four foot lengths. Right now, it's inaccessible unless I rent a pair of hip waders, as the low ground below the retaining wall is under water at the moment, and may be for the entire summer... How does one man manage to maneuver two cutting thingies at the same time? Those thingies must weigh a lot - and the size of the tree limb - it's taller than I am - how did he get it down all by himself without bringing down the wires too? Okay, so now more tornadoes are passing overhead, it's pouring rain outside AGAIN, I can see just fine in the dark because the lightning is keeping me company as I type and is lighting up the house just fine. Well, that's one way to save on my utility bills... There's flooding all over the place. I saw earlier today through the frantic activity around the house that my immediate neighbor to the south must have a flooded basement... Oy, on the news just now (updating at 10:38 p.m.) that the Governor has declared 29 counties in the state, including my county, as a disaster area. Yeah, it's a disaster all right. Please Goddess, keep my sump pump running and no more rain! Except it's supposed to rain all night, and one more severe storm center is forming to the southwest of us, headed our way. Will I get any sleep tonight?