It Was One of Those Days

Y'all know that tree that we were getting ready to take down? The one looming over the house? Well, it's down. 

On top of our back porch. 

But in the ever-optimistic mindset of Mason Cook: It could have been worse; there were no career-ending injuries. Plus, see the remodeled bathroom on the right? Spared. The recently finished utility room on the left, untouched.

OK, now, I know what you're thinking. Why didn't they call the professionals? But, really, we were SO close to getting it down clean and easily. But as Mason chainsawed the tree and I accelerated the truck, pulling the steel cable tied up high around the tree, pulling it away from the house, who knew the tree would split up high, entangling the top in all the other treetops? See:

Yup, that's a big-ass tree trunk dangling just off the back of the cabin.  Insert expletive here. We tugged and tugged from all sorts of angles, and heard lots of eerie cracking sounds, but we couldn't get the tree to fall away from the house, so we were left with the option of pulling it straight down.  Odds were good we'd clear the house, we figured. But apparently, gambling is not our thing. Never has been. Sometime I'll tell you about Mason's Las Vegas misadventures.

After some tears (OK, only Nan; Mason just said, "We can fix it."), we ate some lunch, then cleaned up the mess and assessed the damage. Truly, we were lucky; the damage is pretty much isolated to the back porch, though the entire metal roof back there will have to be replaced. But as you can see from the rust, it was going to have to be replaced eventually anyway, right? RIGHT?

(Check out Nick the Dog, here. All he's thinking is, "I still get my evening walk, right?")

And don't the damage look a lot more minor by just getting the tree out of the way? Don't it? No worries, eh?

But ... you know that kitchen remodel that was about to happen? Yeah, it's on hold. Insert expletive here. 

And all evening long, I've been singing that damn NFL Fantasy Football commercial: "So you've had a bad day ..." If only it were just my fantasy football team that crashed through my porch.