Wednesday, December 29, 2004

it's still not as bad as poop in the basement

Ok. If I ever, I mean EVER, complain about not having anything to write about, please feel free to slap me in the face and tell me to shut the hell up. Those words came back to bite me in the ass, as usual. Last night (this morning?) I went to bed around 2, thinking I would sleep til around 10, get up, and do some job searching. Apparently, someone didn't like that plan. I woke up at exactly 7:08 AM when the sky started falling. I know it was exactly 7:08 because the first thing I do when the sky starts falling is look at my alarm clock.

After the huge crash, I closed my eyes again and thought, "hmm, maybe that was just snow shifting on the roof" because when I wake up apparently I am a total idiot. A few seconds later, I decided I should probably take a look out the window, just to make sure a bunch of snow and ice hadn't fallen on the dog or something.

When I peeked out the blinds, my first thought was, "the fence looks kind of crooked." My second thought was, "hmm, I don't remember the fence being crooked AND five inches away from my window." My third thought was, "maybe I should put my glasses on and flip on a light." I did both of those things and opened my blinds all the way. Stood there. Stared. Stared some more. Walked through the bathroom that connects my room to the step in front of the back door. Looked out the back door and lost all ability to comprehend what I was looking at.

My bedroom window NORMALLY looks out onto the back patio. The hot tub is directly under my window. I couldn't see the patio OR the hot tub, because the patio cover had folded in on itself and was now resting on the hot tub and the air conditioning unit.

When it got light out, my mom and I went to inspect the damage. I believe the only words spoken during this inspection were, "holy," "shit," and, "you've got to be kidding me." I had a sort of giddy, hysteria bubbling up from my stomach and escaping in short bursts of laughter. It reminded me of the day last year when I came home from class and my housemate told me that our basement had flooded with sewage. There are just some words in my vocabulary that, when put together in specific statements, make absolutely no sense to my brain. "The porch cover collapsed," "Bush was reelected," and "our basement has shit floating around in it" are some of those statements.

Luckily, I had gotten a digital camera (!!!) for Christmas and I now had an excellent excuse to take a whole crapload of pictures. My dad came home from work early and soon figured out that we would have to try and tear the cover down ourselves because we couldn't open the back door. Keep in mind, the patio cover was still attached to the house. My parents went to Lowe's to rent some magical saw that cuts through anything (!), even diamonds, steel, and LIQUID HOT MAGMA.

Before he could start cutting the shit out of some aluminum, we had to shovel all the snow out of the crevice formed by the folding patio cover. This was a complete pain in the ass, because each panel of the cover had a thick slab of ice inside. We had to take the shovel, pound the shit out of the ice until it broke, and then carry the ice shards off of the patio into the side yard. Once we had cleared off as much snow and ice as we could reach, my dad would cut into the metal with the Magical Saw of Power and Extreme Heaviness and we'd carry the pieces and throw them in a big pile.

This entire process took about four hours. Towards the end, some guys came to haul the pile of crap away and they helped my dad take down the last little bit of patio cover. By this time, all of us were walking around like zombies. Our feet hurt, our arms hurt, our hands were wet and cold, and let me tell you, we all looked so pretty. The funny thing is, we were all in pretty good spirits the whole time. Because what can you do besides laugh? No one got hurt, there was no serious damage to the house. My parents were thinking of losing the patio cover anyway, so really, this just saved them the trouble.

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