The Joys of Home Ownership
by William on 2009-06-12
And by “joys”, I mean “anxieties”.
Remember that big hailstorm that blew through Austin back in March, and cracked the windshield on our car? First of all, we still have the dents in the roof of the car. We have an appointment to get them fixed on the 23d of this month. Body shops around town have been exceptionally busy since the storm.
Second of all, we got another one last night. We first became aware that there was a storm coming our way when we sat down in front of the television to watch The Office, and every station on the air was showing weather maps and talking about tornadoes in Liberty Hill. Except for Telemundo; I think they were broadcasting a soccer match.
At first we were relieved that we were in our house, and, perhaps more importantly, that our car was in our garage. But as the hail increased, so did our anxiety. We have a metal roof over our patio, so the storm was loud. It sounded like one hundred giant bags of popcorn popping simultaneously in one hundred giant microwaves, next to railroad tracks with a train passing by.
We have a large sliding glass back door, and the whole time I was afraid the wind would whip a hailstone right at us like a gunshot and shatter the glass. And we donʼt have a curtain over that door yet, so Iʼm sure that would have introduced all kinds of wind, rain, leaves, and hail into our kitchen and family room. I love rain, but I prefer it outside my house.
Thankfully, that didnʼt happen. We did not completely escape damage, though. First, a branch was torn off one of our crape myrtle trees:
Thatʼs OK, though, because we have several more of these trees, and as you can see from the photo, you canʼt even tell one of the branches is missing.
Second, a window screen was blown off one of our front windows:
I actually saw the screen come off during the storm last night. Iʼm glad we have those bushes in front of our house; they gave me confidence that the screen would not blow away down the street. Can you imagine me knocking on my neighborsʼ doors the next morning, asking, “Excuse me, but have you seen a window screen, about this tall, and this wide? It ran away last night during the storm.”
I imagine I could also post “Reward!” posters on all the local telephone poles. What do you think is an appropriate reward for the safe return of a lost window screen?
The screen was bent slightly, but I succeeded in hammering it back into shape and mounting it back on the window this morning. I also gave it a stern talking-to, so I donʼt think we will have a problem with it trying to get away in the future.