The steady tone of the storm sirens confused me this morning. I didn’t even identify it as an alarm, and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn’t until I felt Summer moving around that I realized it was a weather alert. She said a tornado was confirmed in Knoxville, but all we heard was thunder and heavy rain. Eaddie woke up and crawled into bed with us, and I held onto her for an hour or so while she chatted nervously about the weather. Once it all calmed down, she went back to her room and we were all able to get back to sleep.
When I finally woke up for the morning, I started making some biscuits and bacon for breakfast. Summer came in and made eggs and corned beef hash, and the three of us sat down to eat together before we had to take Eaddie to band camp. She had been super excited about it for a while, so I wanted to go with Summer to drop her off.
There was debris everywhere, and we could see several branches down all the way to Tech. Trash can lids littered the campus, and lots of things were just knocked over. Eaddie hit the ground running as she encountered a bunch of friends that were excited to see her. Summer took me back to the house, and I left for home.
As soon as I got to my house, I peered around back to see if there was any damage. Then I saw some limbs down in the front yard. That was when I spotted a huge branch sticking straight up out of my roof like a lawn dart. I went inside to investigate, and it had gone down through the roof and into the wall of the front bedroom. It looked like it very easily could have gone into the bathroom, but it didn’t. Water was steadily dripping down onto Eaddie’s bed, and of course the paperwork I had scattered everywhere waiting to be put away was completely soaked.
I texted Dad for some help with a chainsaw, and had Summer come over as soon as she could. I started moving things out of the bedroom, and then Dad and Summer went up onto the roof to cut the branch up and remove it from the roof. As soon as it was removed, the water stopped actively dripping into the house. Luckily it didn’t rain again during the day, but we didn’t get to watch The Flash in IMAX like I had planned. I spent the entire day with my carpet cleaner, and sucked about five gallons of water out of the carpet instead.
The highlight of the day was hearing that Eaddie had made first band, first chair at camp. As my water extraction project slowed down, I took a shower and headed toward Summer’s for the evening. I picked up some Zaxby’s for dinner, where I ran into Allen and Charlotte. We chatted for a bit, and then I continued up to Summer to share our dinner. She was already in bed, and returned to it as soon as she finished eating. I ached absolutely everywhere, and tried my best to get to bed early.
Stupid me-tree.