How It Came to This

This is a sign, right? If you walked out and saw this, you'd run screaming, right?

Unfortunately, it came too late. We were already in for a pound. About 40,000 of them. So I just stood in the alleyway and laughed until I nearly wet myself.

Not knowing where to start this story, I figured I'd go Tarrantino-style and start in the middle. Then I'll just go past and present as I see fit.

What you are seeing is about Month 9 of The Addition, depending on whether you count the 6 month delay in even starting the project as part of the timeline (I did not). After watching ducks paddle around in the giant hole this went into for a couple of months, SS Incompetent Contractor set sail pouring concrete and building walls (without first putting in the drain tile, but we'll save that for another edition) around May. The walls were framed (by non-SS IC people, including myself) in September. The roofer was scheduled to come the next day, when, on a balmy, clear, and windless night the neighbor's beyond-dead rotting 70 foot maple tree split in half and landed on our day-old framing job with such terrifying force that I thought it was The End.

And about an hour after the tree fell, the drought broke and it rained on our freshly-framed and sheathed addition for two weeks straight with no roof because the neighbor's insurance wouldn't pay to remove the tree. But I am jumping ahead.

This is some funny shit. You know why? Because we had spent months trying to get Dominion Power to move the *&@# power line underground. And we had offered to bury our neighbors' lines as well, but they refused (because if it later needed to be fixed they'd never find it!), which caused this process to drag on even longer. They ignored my list of advantages regarding a buried line, like not losing power during a storm (as we had during Hurricane Isabel). So, after four months of fighting with Dominion, they finally buried our line and moved the neighbors' line over a week earlier. And the falling silver maple took with it the neighbors' power lines. Ours, of course, was safely underground. And so, upon seeing this incredible display of karmic retribution/ridiculous irony for them and continued streak of bad luck for us, I craughed. That's right - I cried and laughed til it hurt.

The silver lining for us was that the tree also took down the Verizon line we had also been fighting to bury for months without success, and they came a few days later and finally did their work, and miraculously, our spectacularly-built framing incurred only a slight dent in the parapet wall from the tree. (Posting about the rain damage TBA.) Sadly for our neighbors and invisible to the eye upon initial viewing, their power line was snapped so hard it actually pulled the power from their circa-1940 (and therefore irreparable) main circuit box, leaving them without power for about 5 days until it was replaced. I truly don't relish the financial suffering and discomfort they incurred from this event, as this generates bad karma. But i still think that the whole scene would have won for Best Comedy in Home Construction.