For Tree

It’s Saturday morning. 5:41 a.m. I have about an hour until my alarm goes off suggesting a morning run and about an hour and three seconds until I toss it out the window. Clayton and I (and Bryson) are awoken by the sound of the entire house shaking, like someone with an otherworldly wing span grabbed the four corners and went to town for a few seconds.

In the same breath, Clayton darts up, says, “sounded like thunder,” and falls right back to sleep. Bryson and I are still double checking that we didn’t wet our beds and looking around furiously to make sure we haven’t been swept up in a Kansas-style twister and hurled into a world of dancing little people. Neither seemed to be the case, but I thought maybe I should check things out because the friendly giants usually shake us awake on Thursdays, not Saturdays.

I ever-so-courageously took 20 minutes to peek around the corner of the bedroom doorway into the hallway. Clear. The rest of the house, all doors and windows, were clear, too. Then I looked in the backyard. And our weekend plans changed a bit.

Meet Tree!

Tree was so tired of standing still for years and years and years. He got so bored in the neighbor’s yard never getting played with or talked to, and he saw all this fun we were having in our backyard, with grilling chicken, working out (yeah, I do in the backyard, move on), roughhousing with a big adorable dog. It all looked SO EXCITING to Tree. And standing there holding onto all that rain was so, so heavy on his limbs. So he decided to make a move. A big time, game changing move for his life.

And Tree up and moved to our yard. Loudly. Awkwardly. Without asking. And really, really inconveniently.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the next step was in this situation. We are new to being attacked by nature. I woke Clayton up, but I didn’t want to completely freak his freak. I kept my Dog Whisperer calm-assertive engery in check and simply said, “Clayton. There’s a tree on the roof.”

We are renting this house, and because nothing of ours was damaged, we didn’t feel the need to deal with the tiny problem of a tree protruding through the roof until closer to 9 a.m. It’s the weekend, hello. I’m guessing the realtor/property manager is glad we felt that way.

Kickball playoffs were also Saturday, and we really couldn’t be bothered with this mess while trying to focus on taking home the gold. “No, realtor, we cannot stick around for five hours and make sure raccoons don’t start renting out rooms in the attic or setting up a secret neighborhood gambling ring. WE HAVE KICKBALL PLAYOFFS.”

The realtor, who manages our house as more of a favor to a family friend than an actual job, has never been much for going above and beyond the call of duty. We’re still waiting on a response about the water heater that a professional said could “go at any minute.” In February. He called Clayton after we had secured a victory in our first playoff game and said the tree service could not come until the next day, and he would try to get the roofers to patch the roof early next week. In the meantime? Call him if it starts to rain, and he’ll head over with a tarp.

Really? We need to alert him if it rains? Doesn’t THE RAIN alert you when it rains? How about we get plain out of control and just put the tarp on now? I know, I know, it’s so much more fun to scale a ladder in a torrential downpour and try to secure a slippery tarp to a failing roof in the middle of a thunderstorm while avoiding the massive tree-shaped hole, but I’m just spitballing here.

Obviously, we were quite concerned about the salvaging of our rental house. I mean, we could have gone straight to the cookout celebrating our mediocre kickball performance, but we didn’t. We went home for a half hour first to move our television away from the potential drip zone. Clayton couldn’t spend one second longer away from the Action Area, and before I put my purse down, I see his hot pink kickball shirt darting up the ladder onto the roof. The unavoidable, masculine drive to “check things out,” I suppose.

He actually had an impressive moment of inspiration and used an extra* shower curtain liner and the heavy duty stapler we got at JoAnn Fabrics (don’t ask) to create a makeshift cover that the idiot raccoons would hopefully not be able to figure out. Pick another attic, a-holes.  

And then we left for the rest of the night, repeating the mantra “It ain’t our house.” Is that mean? Whatevs, I had some cornhole redemption to take care of (which I did NOT) and Doritos to consume (which I very much DID).

This morning the tree service showed up bright and early and got to work. I pretended to sleep for two more hours, but it’s difficult with size 10 work boots stomping around the roof and chainsaws buzzing away.

This was not the future Tree had imagined, I’m afraid.

*Edit: My mistake. We are now missing a shower curtain liner in our bathroom.