The storms of life

When it rains, it pours.  

First of all, many thanks again for your prayers and well wishes for my Hubby.  His surgery went very well and it was (as I suspected) indeed a hernia.  The protruding area thankfully turned out to not to be intestinal, but simply fatty tissue which the surgeon opted to remove.  Personally, I felt Hubby should have been able to keep the fat as he is already very thin!  Lol  No mesh was needed for the repair, only a few sutures.  While he can’t lift anything greater than 20 pounds for 4 weeks, the doctor left it up to him as to when he might feel ready to go back to work.  As his job does require some lifting, we will just need to see how quickly his body heals as to when he goes back to work.  We do need the income but I think it would be best not to push it as the potential of further injury is very real.  

I never did get to doing any M-Turking.  After finishing my blog post (I had been sitting at a table), I moved to where others were sitting.  An elderly gentleman started talking to me and as one conversation led to another, it turned out I knew his wife who was in for a hip replacement.  I also knew their granddaughter very well as she spends several weeks at the camp I work for.  Small world!

After Hubby was discharged, we stopped by briefly by the shores of Lake Superior to see the huge waves brought by the storm.  Some areas reported wave heights of over 25 feet!  Quite a sight to see, even from the comfort of our car.  Hubby was a real trooper as before heading home I needed to drop off a box to UPS, stop and get his prescription for pain meds filled and also get some things from the grocery store.  Given the distance we live from the city, I always try and combine my trips as much as possible.  Probably was a good thing Hubby was still groggy from the sedation!

The high winds and rain continued as we made our way home.  So many trees down and there were also a lot of power outages.  I dodged several tree limbs just to get down the private road on which we live.  Pulling into our driveway, we were saddened to see that a huge pine was down.  Thankfully it fell into the woods rather than across our driveway.  I was also thankful to see that we hadn’t lost power, but then we realized we had a much bigger problem.

Our roof had leaked!  While the shingles look good, we have always questioned the workmanship of the installation.  This roof was put on roughly 8 years ago by the former owner.  Our house is contemporary in style, with vaulted ceilings on both the main floor and the upstairs.  The upstairs also has two bedrooms with large clearstory windows on the vaulted side of the house.  Based on the areas of leaking, we are questioning the issue being flashing around the clearstory windows.  Hubby and I have done roofing (on our former house, a barn, and another outbuilding) at our previous home, but given the height of this roof, there is no way we could safely do any roofing on this house.  Given the time of year, it is now also highly doubtful we could get someone to make a repair as who knows what else might be going on.

What we are going to do is at least call a company and see if they can give us an opinion as to what we might possibly be facing.  While the area in which we live faces many elements of weather, the rain we had yesterday was unusual in that it literally was coming sideways, pelting against these clearstory windows.  Regardless, it is something we will need to address ASAP, which will likely be next Spring.  Oh, the storms of life.  When it rains, it pours!  Still, I refuse to feel defeated.  For the time being, I will hope for the best all while planning for worst.