My thoughts are scattered. As a result of tonight's events, my stress level and worry are at all time highs. It's probably best if I just start at the beginning because I'm sorta processing all this in real time. My feeling are still raw and I'm unsure of what's going to happen. **Pictures are on the last page.*** *
I learned that both Elliott and Emmett were having a rough day after I picked them up from school. Elliott had his mechanical pencil stolen and Emmett had his water bottle stolen. Neither of these things are huge deals to me but to the boys, it's was a huge deal and a betrayal of sorts.
Things have been tight financially and so we haven't been able to really do anything that wasn't free. Free is totally fine but sometimes it's nice to go to a movie or order dinner.
The boys were still very upset from school and I could see there was no easy way to defuse things so I felt a distraction was in order.
I had received my paycheck from Google this afternoon and so I decided that I would take everyone to see *The House with A Clock In The Wall. *Everyone has been dying to see it and there have been quite a few, *not so subtle hints* that it was out now.
I decided that going would do everyone some good. Little did I know how important that decision would be.
Everyone was super excited and I felt pretty good about that. We got settled into the movie and about 20 minutes into the actual movie I got a phone call from one of my neighbors. I replied via text that we were at movie but wanted to make sure everything was okay.
I ended up going into the hallway to call her back and find out what was going on.
I learned that we had a massive storm blow through during the during the hour or so we'd been away from home. The storm packed with 60 mile an hour wind gusts. As a result, a massive section of the tree in front of our house had been ripped off and fallen onto our house.
I wasn't sure how bad it was but it sounded bad.
I had no choice but to gather everyone up, leave the movie and head home to assess the damage. The boys were not happy but once I explained what was going on, they wanted home but were terrified.
The section of tree that fell is *massive*. It did considerable damage but it could have been so much worse. If it had directly impacted the house, the tree would have literally been in the boys bedroom and possibly our living room as well.
As it stands, the tree sorta grazed the side of our house, ripping down the gutters, ripping a steel TV tower in half, damaging the roof line in at least two areas, damaging the garage roof and possibly part of the balcony off our bedroom. I have to double check in the morning..
It took out part of our fence but seems to have spared our central AC unit. We are incredibly, incredibly lucky.
If we'd been here when this happened the boys would be an absolute mess. The neighbors said it was unbelievably loud. It would have shook the house and sounded like it was coming through the walls or the roof. The boys would have been beside themselves.
Anyway, I had called my Dad from the theater and he rushed over, getting there before us. He did a quick sweep of the inside of the house to make sure there wasn't any water damage and thankfully, as of now, there is no obvious signs of damage. Although the areas that would be damaged are not easily accessible. We'd have to venture into the crawl space on the third floor.
This is a massive problem and I'm not sure what we're going to do.
I spoke with State Farm and started the claim process but I was informed that they had no eta as to when I would hear back from a claims adjuster because with all the hurricane damage on the east coast, there was a long line.
Unfortunately, I can't rally do anything until the adjuster comes out and documents the damage.
I speak with my agent on Monday and follow up.
I don't remember what my deductible is but I would guess it's in the neighborhood of at least $1,000, meaning I have to come up with at least $1,000 in order to proceed.
What will likely happen is that they will cut a check for the repairs and maybe the cleanup, but it will be less whatever the deductible is. I'll have to come up with whatever that numbers ends up being, before we can proceed, unless I can figure something else out.
This is the last thing we needed but as I said, we are unbelievably lucky that we weren't here when it happened and that it fell the way it did.
The I ended up ordering pizza in hopes of calming things down a little bit. Everyone went to bed without too much trouble but they're definitely on edge and that seems like a normal response at this point..
I'll get a better look at things in the morning.
Below are some pictures showing what happened and will give you a better ride of what we're looking at.
Some of the damage is obvious but some will have to be assessed after the tree has been removed. Speaking of tree removal, I'm pretty sure the rest of the tree will end up having to come down. When we looked into taking this tree down previously, we were looking at thousands of dollars.
I'm so grateful things aren't any worse. At the same time, I have no idea what's going to happen or how soon it's going to happen.
I know many people have it much, much worse than us right now but thoughts and prayers would be appreciated anyway.
[foogallery id="82836"]
