It's raining, it's pouring...

...and it's bringing down trees around our ears.

We've had thirteen inches of rain in the last two or three weeks, according to the city rain gauge. We took our local drought index down five hundred points or so over the course of one weekend. It's kind of miserable being cooped up all the time but considering we were a brush fire waiting to happen, I'm glad we've finally got some rain.

The problem is that we live across the street from this little swamp. Bay head, marshland, whatever you wanna call it, it has tons of trees and low-lying land. The edge of it is only about twelve feet from the front of my home. And one of the central features of this bay head was an old, dead tree that stood out kind of in the middle of it. It stood taller than any of the other trees, and birds loved to perch on it because of its height. We had some smaller maple and banana and other trees out there, but nothing like the old dead tree. I've kinda wondered about it for a while, wondered how strong it was and whether or not a good storm would bring it down.

Well, about an hour and a half ago we had a little spontaneous rainstorm. Winds were really high and rain was just pouring. There was one clap of thunder that seemed pretty close, and about fifteen minutes later, we heard a pop and a crash. It took me a little while to figure out what had happened, but come to find out that old tree had fallen. If it had been six inches taller it would have taken out my neighbor's van, which was parked in front of his house. There's shards (yes, SHARDS) of tree laying everywhere out in the road. If you can imagine someone dropping a delicate glass cup on a tile floor, that's pretty much what happened to the tree.

Part of the problem is that there was also a light pole right out front of my house with a power line run to it (not connected to the residential power, thankfully!). When the tree fell, it took out the power line, so we have a live wire laying out there in the grass and rain. My neighbor almost stepped on it but I saw it before he could step backwards. Poor fellow goes in for heart surgery next Thursday but he woulda been in there a lot sooner if he'd stepped on that wire.

I go to the doctor this afternoon for my ear, provided my mother can get around the tree shards to get to my house. I'll post details on that once I get home.

Also, I went to the endocrinologist on Tuesday. My testosterone levels are down, from an 85 to a 13. So that's a definite improvement.

I applied for a job yesterday, so we'll see if that pans out. I've got a couple others I plan on applying for as well.

That's what's going on right now. I really don't want to go to the doctor, and I REALLY don't want to take Sweet'ums with me, but I don't have a lot of choice. NG has to work and can't keep her at home, and my mom isn't keen on me driving in Tampa traffic by myself (I don't drive much anyway). So my afternoon is tied up. But anyway, I'll tell more later... time to go get the hubster up for lunch and get Sweet'ums ready.