The Case of the Missing Branches

          The saga of the storm continues. Sunday, during the NFL playoffs, I went into the laundry room (on the bottom floor of our house) to throw a load of laundry in. When I reached into the pile of dirty clothes in the laundry chute, the clothes were wet. We didn’t get that wet when we were cleaning the yard up although it had been raining.

          I climbed up onto the counter and stuck my head up into the laundry chute, which is under the master bathroom sink. I felt the drain pipe. Was it wet or was it just cold because it’s close to an outer wall? I wiped it with a to-be-laundered t-shirt. It was wet.

          Upstairs, the NY Giants vs. San Francisco 49ers game went into overtime. I waited until the game ended, before I told “the boys” that the sink was leaking. They disappeared immediately, even though dinner was ready, and came back to tell me that the water wasn’t from the sink. They thought it was from the roof, leaking down through the outside wall. We ate dinner, and then they confirmed their “diagnosis” by peering up into the attic.

         The next day, Monday, John called our insurance company. He explained that we’d had over 30 branches land on our roof in the snow/ice storm, and now the roof was leaking. They contacted one of their roofing contractors from Seattle (the ones nearer to us were all booked up after the storm). I was relieved. I didn’t want John or Johnny to get up on our shake roof because it is (to borrow a friend’s gross, but extremely accurate phrase) “slippery as snot” up there.

          When I got home, at 4:45, there were two phone messages from the contractor trying to set up an appointment. John called him. They would meet at our house at 1:00 the next day.

          At home after work on Tuesday, Johnny told me this bizarre story. He was at work when his cell phone rang at 12:30.  It was John, “Did you get up on the roof before you left for work, and take the branches down?”

Johnny guffawed, “No!”

“Well, there aren’t any branches on our roof!”

Johnny was as baffled as his father.

John saw our neighbor across the street clearing debris from his yard. He asked him, “Did you see anybody up on our roof?”

Tom told him that he had seen a man up on our roof the day before clearing branches off. There was no company name on his truck. It made no sense. They scratched their heads, and decided that maybe the mysterious branch clearer had gone to the wrong address.

Second phone call to Johnny: “What’s the password to your mother’s computer?”

“Why?”

“The roof guy is coming, and I need proof that there were branches on the roof.  I need to show him the pictures your mother took for her blog.”

Branches on the front part of our roof.

Branches on the roof on the back of our house.

When Nordic Services showed up, more phone calls were made. Apparently, when our insurance company contacted them, one of their guys was in our area. Before we even set up an appointment, he went to our house and cleared the roof. He didn’t tell anybody.

Case of the disappearing branches solved. It wasn’t a wrong address, clean up fairies, or industrious menehunes. It was an eager, efficient contractor.

That night a windstorm blew through. There are branches up on the roof again, but not as many as before. So, when they come to fix the roof, John’s story will be more believable.

Laura Keolanui Stark will confirm that there really were branches on the roof! She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

After the Storm

           The best part of this five-day storm was that the predicted high winds were only 25 mph, not 45-50 mph last night and today, Saturday. The ice did more than enough damage. We didn’t need a windstorm to totally finish us off.

           The roads are still slushy and several of our usual routes remain closed because of downed trees and power lines. 140,000 households are still without power, but the sun came out for a little while today. So did people. They came out of their homes to survey the damage, clean up, and do the things they couldn’t while the weather held us hostage. We were almost like the Who’s in Dr. Suess’s Whoville, except we didn’t join hands and sing like they did in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” at least not anywhere that I'm aware of. 

           I took more pictures of the damage as we ran errands. Driving through Tacoma, to us it didn’t seem to have as much damage as Puyallup, but we were in the urban part, so there weren’t as many trees to begin with, and the trees bore the brunt of the storm. 

          Although in Tacoma, a warehouse with a flat roof collapsed. The workers inside were smart. When they heard the building groan, they got out. Nobody was hurt. The News Tribune reported that both of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges were closed for six hours because sheets of ice were falling from the girders and suspension cables.

Tacoma Narrows Bridges. Photo from The News Tribune.

          Back in Puyallup, at the WSU Research and Extension Center, one of the biggest trees was split apart even though it is an evergreen. 

WSU Research and Extension Center, Puyallup, WA. 3-story building in backgroud.

            Overall, the hardwood trees did not do as well as the evergreens. A row of cherry (or apple?) trees that lined one of the streets on my way to Zumba was shattered. Spring is going to look very different around here.

43rd Ave. SE, South Hill, WA (road in front of the YMCA)

           John and I tackled the branches strewn all over our yard. He cranked up the chain saw. 

          I sorted through the debris. Pulling branches out of the pile was like playing an oversized, twisted game of pickup sticks. 

          I dragged limbs to the curb if they were less than six feet long, or to John to cut if they were longer. 

Limbs to be cut up.

"5, 6, pick up sticks"

          I don’t know if the garbage collectors or the city will pick them up, but other people had yard waste stacked up at the curb. It’s worth a try.

           For three hours John cut debris up and I hauled it. Our yard waste bin is full. Our curbside pile grew taller and taller to become the biggest one on our street so far. We’re probably only a fourth of the way through, we still have the roof and backyard to go, but it was a good start.

"Well John (Jones), you sure do know how to show a girl a good time!"--from Indiana Jones.

Laura Keolanui Stark is un-hunkering down. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com when her internet service comes back.

Ice Days

          Snow day #3, Thursday, January 19, 2012 was actually an ice day. John and I flew out of bed at 3:30 in the morning on Thursday after hearing what sounded like an elephant stampede on the roof over our bedroom. The dogs met us in the hall without even barking. Chicken Little was right! The sky was falling!

We thought it was heavy snow falling off of over laden branches on the Douglas Firs (more than 100 years old) surrounding our house. It was only a few minutes before the “running” sound changed to thunderous thuds.

When we opened the front door to see what was going on, we could see branches snapping, and then falling to the ground. The sound was scary—a loud gunshot crack, followed by whooshing air, ending with a thud, or a bowling alley sound, if the branch was rolling down our roof. We didn’t get much sleep.

We got up, thankful that our power was on and turned the TV on to watch the news. I couldn’t wait for sunrise, so that we could see what was up on our roof, and assess what damage had been done. At 7:30 it was still dark. Had the sun taken a snow day? Was the sun’s power out?

When light did finally eke through the clouds, we could see lots of branches on our roof.  Freezing rain had made sheets of ice that covered the blankets of snow and pushed fir branches to their breaking points. Most of the branches on the roof had landed over our bedroom and Sarah’s bedroom too.

Roof above Sarah's bedroom.

The most disturbing thing was the pile of 10 to 12-foot long or longer branches where Johnny usually parks his car alongside our garage. Each branch probably weighs about 75 pounds. Around here, those branches are called “widow makers.” They would’ve done some serious damage to his car if it had been there.

Johnny's parking space.

His Honda Accord, that survived five hard winters in Pullman, Washington, wasn’t in its usual spot here because Johnny was with his girlfriend house sitting her house. Her mother and stepfather are out of town. Johnny and Sarah had planned to spend one night there. It had turned into two nights and three days without power.

Near-miss of John's truck.

The branches from the Douglas Firs had also missed John’s truck, but just barely.  His F-150 is always parked in front of Johnny’s car, right next to a cedar tree whose trunk is so big it would take three adults holding hands to hug it. John tried to move his truck onto the street, but his back tires just spun on the ice and dug a hole beside the driveway. With branches cracking over him, and our bags of sand buried under the pile of branches in Johnny’s parking space, he decided to wait, and hope his truck wouldn’t get taken out.

Old growth Douglas Fir trees around our house.

Throughout the day we listened to all those branches breaking. It sounded like popcorn popping. A few hours later, when there was a lull, John shoveled the dirt the truck had dug out in front of his tires for traction. At last, he managed to move his truck, with much slipping and sliding, less than ten feet away onto the street. Our two other cars were safe in the garage.

I got on Facebook and found out just how lucky we were to have power. People were using their I-phones to post that they didn’t have power. Our house was in a little pocket of heat and lights. Our neighborhood has underground utilities, but the main streets leading to it don’t. Facebook friends reported that those roads were closed because of fallen trees and power lines. Backyard neighbor Carol posted a picture of her beautiful maple trees that didn’t make it. Then we lost our internet service.

Right lane of 39th Avenue closed.

The kids' bus stop up by the Manorwood Clubhouse/Pool.

What the Manorwood Clubhouse/Pool area looked like in Fall 2010.

Johnny and Sarah K. came back to our house arriving in style. Since his parking space was no longer available, Johnny parked out front. I was looking out the window when he drove up the hill, a little past our house. He started turning left and I thought he was going into our neighbor’s driveway, but he was pulling up on his emergency brake so the back end of his car slid up the hill and he drifted exactly parallel and 6” from the curb. I guess that’s an added skill he learned at snowy WSU.

View from the top of our hill. John & Johnny's vehicles parked on the street.

He and John helped the neighbor across the street push her little SUV into her driveway. Earlier, her husband had parked it out on the street. Later, they went somewhere and when they came home, she told John and Johnny that he warned her to park on the street. But, she said she was doing what she wanted—parking in the driveway.

Downed tree by mailboxes.l

Widow maker hanging off our roof.

Johnny and Sarah said that it had only gotten down to 60 degrees in her house because they had a gas fireplace, but it was awfully dark, so they came back to our house.    We all slept in the basement while the branches rained down outside. Even in the basement, I startled awake with the booms, and counted six direct hits on our house. In the morning, Johnny, who was sleeping on the concrete floor, said that one of the branches hit so hard that he could feel it shake the cement foundation of our house.

The source of all the "bumps in the night," above our bedroom.

Today, day #4, was the day that Puyallup started thawing under our usual gray, rainy skies. When we woke up we could still hear things hitting our roof—mostly giant blobs of snow from trees. The view from the porch wasn’t good. One of the gorgeous maples on the edge of our front yard had split. The red Saturn that our neighbor’s wife insisted on parking in her driveway was covered with branches. There were even more branches on our driveway. John started cleaning up, dragging branches to the side of the driveway, and then shoveling the snow off, so we could get my car out of the garage. 

Our neighbor's SUV parked in their driveway.

I turned on the news which said that 275,000 households didn’t have power. The state patrol had dealt with four times as many car accidents. Tractor trailers were jack-knifed on several highways. Highway 18 between Auburn and Federal Way was closed because of downed trees. Most school districts were still closed. A man in Issaquah died when he got hit by a falling limb as he was taking an ATV out of his shed. SeaTac airport was closed for a few hours. Amtrak stopped service between Seattle and Portland. Someone at the LA Times called Seattlites snow wimps. I’m SURE Los Angeles would handle all this snow and ice better than we did because they’re known for all the snow and ice they get. They’re also real outdoorsy down there in LA.

Beautiful maples in front of our house in November.

Broken maples after the ice storm.

The weather forecast wasn’t good. There’s a flood warning because storm drains are clogged with debris and snow, so the rain and melting snow isn’t draining causing urban flooding. Everyone is asked to clear storm drains in front of their houses. Tonight the winds will pick up, so the trees and power lines that haven’t already fallen will be tested again. The high winds will last for a day. After that, they’re seeing the same pattern that kicked off the snow earlier this week. I wonder why I’m just not feeling the same snow anticipation I was five days ago.

Laura Keolanui Stark had to go roaming in search of internet to post this. Our internet is still down. She can be reached eventually at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Snow Days!

My kids aren’t snow day school age anymore, and I’m most definitely not, but I still get a smile on my face when I hear those two magical words, “snow day.” I was supposed to work today, assessing elementary school students’ reading levels, but it snowed. Our phone rang at 6 am and the recorded message announced that Puyallup’s schools would be on a 2-hour delay.

Not long after that, the phone rang again and the leader of our DIBELs team, Sunny, explained that there was no sense in us reporting for work because the first and second graders had such a shortened day, there wouldn’t be much time for us to test them. I hung up, and whispered an excited, “YES!” not wanting to wake the dog up.

         There was 3” of snow on the ground. I pictured a day spent as a lady of leisure. Visions of hot cocoa, painting fingernails, reading a book, and quilting danced in my head. Of course that’s not what happened.

          While I made breakfast, I started clearing out the remains of Christmas cookies, candy, and crackers. That led to cleaning out the refrigerator after breakfast, which then led to cleaning a couple of shelves in the pantry.

         Then I sat down at my desk to pay a few bills. Our mailbox is across the street from our house, closer than a stone’s throw. It seemed a lot longer in the snow. After I slipped four times, almost landing on the bills as well as my butt before I got even halfway to the end of our driveway, I decided I better go back into the house and put my boots on.

         It was still slick out there, but I made it to the mailbox without falling. Skipping the snow shovel, I kicked the snow off the sidewalk and our front steps with my boots.

         More snow was predicted, so I started thinking of comfort food, and decided that macaroni and cheese would be perfect for dinner. Once I got it made, it would be fairly easy to re-heat on the woodstove if we lost power. I’d need more milk. That meant I’d have to make a run to Wal-Mart for “supplies”—more cheese, Milk bones for the dogs, and canned cat food. 

         Back at home, before I even entered the house, I looked at the mess in the garage and started hauling stuff out to throw into the recycling bin before it got buried in snow. I checked how many logs we had stored in case of a power outage. If we lost electricity, the woodstove would be our only source of heat. We were low, but John said we’d be alright for a few days if the power went out. It was sunny outside and it had warmed up enough to melt the snow on the streets, but the news kept warning that Snow-mageddon was coming.

         As I put the groceries away, Sarah K. came in. One of us got the idea that we should put Pippin out in his first snow to watch his reaction. He was cautious and curious. He got low to stalk it, smelled it, and stepped carefully.

Pippin's first snow experience.

         After the snowy Pippin entertainment, it was time to make myself a cup of cocoa and head to my sewing area for some quilting. That’s when the phone rang. It was Sarah in Pullman. She needed me to give her money so she could pay for some upcoming piano adjudications. I got back in the car and headed for her bank.

         At home again, it was time to start making the mac and cheese. While I was stirring the cheddar cheese into the white sauce, the Puyallup school district called to say that “due to a severe weather warning issued by the National Weather Center, school is cancelled tomorrow.”

After we’d eaten and the dishes were done, I did have my mug of cocoa.  I didn’t get around to sitting at my sewing machine, but that was partly because I’m sure I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Snow Day 2: Overnight we got more snow, totaling about 6-7 inches. 

Mr. Honolulu says, 6-1/4 inches.

            Sarah called at a quarter of eight from WSU to say they got about 18” of the white stuff in Pullman. She was ticked because classes were still on in Pullman, and she was missing one of each of her pairs of gloves. I told her to put a sock on her other hand, and make sure she wears her snow boots. She complained that they cancelled classes at UW in Seattle. Isn’t it ironic that Huskies can’t handle snow? Cougars can.

Then I passed on a story that Johnny told me last night. In 2008, for the first time in WSU’s history, they actually did cancel classes. The snow was as high as car hoods. The following year when the snows started, students complained about having to go to class. President Floyd, who lives just down the street from Sarah’s apartment, responded that he’d been walking around the snowy campus checking conditions, and overheard some students saying they were going to walk to Dissmore’s (a grocery store at the bottom of a steep hill) to buy beer. He said that if students could walk to get beer, they could walk to class. Sarah laughed a little, and then said that she had to put her regular shoes in a bag, and get going.

A "cleared" walkway at WSU, picture courtesy of Jerica Britcher.

I’ve spent the day taking pictures of the snow and watching cars and people try to get up the hill in front of our house. The dogs have been barking at sledders and kids on inner tubes playing on our street. My Dad called from Hawaii to check up on us. After lunch, I have an appointment with my sewing machine unless I get the snowshoes out.

You know this gnome has his snow boots on.

Laura Keolanui Stark is piecing a Christmas quilt. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

End of the World?

          Happy New Year! So far 2012 hasn’t had the usual fresh start, clean slate, new year feeling. On the one hand it’s HAPPY New Year, but on the other hand is it Happy FINAL Year? With all the speculation that the world will end in 2012, there is a Y2K on steroids feel to the start of this year.

          According to some scholars of the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 21, 2012. The History Channel has aired many special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past (2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008). The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012. Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm. Others are analyzing the Book of Revelations in the Bible for clues. One of my friends told me that he heard that the last day will be on my birthday. Woo Hoo!

          It’s not unusual to start a new year with prophecies about what the coming year will bring. It’s also not unusual for the prophecies to be negative or punitive. There’s something in human nature that loves an impending disaster, but these end of the world predictions have taken new year predictions to the ultimate level. The problem (or blessing) with the predictions is that most of them never come true. However, we tend to focus on the few that do come true, or twist them into seeming like they came true.

I’m just happy when the weather is accurately predicted. I remember watching a weather forecaster banter with a sportscaster a few years ago. The sportscaster was giving the weatherman a hard time about getting his forecast totally wrong. The weatherman defended himself by saying he got it right half the time. The sportscaster countered by saying he could do get it right 50% of the time by flipping a coin. The weatherman turned red and went to commercial break.

        So, if we can’t predict current events like the weather within the next three days with all our knowledge, instruments, and satellites out in space, how in the heck could the Mayans, an ancient culture, know what was going to happen in 2012? Do we apply Mayan wisdom to anything else in our daily lives? Do we even know if we’ve interpreted the Mayan calendar correctly? Other than eating food from other cultures, and importing/exporting clothing and out of season produce, we don’t even use that much from other cultures currently on the globe. Suddenly, when it comes to the end of the world, we’re going with the Mayans?

Bizarro Comic by Dan Piraro.

        When everyone was scurrying around preparing for the potential Y2K disaster (computers not programmed to change from 1999 to 2000), my husband John predicted accurately that nothing would happen. He summed it up with a New Yorker’s street smarts, “Do you really think our whole society’s going to crash because of a computer glitch? There’s BIG money at stake. Don’t worry, they’ll figure out how to fix it.”

 We survived Y2K, 1970s recessions, and a childhood filled with monthly drills crouched under school desks in case the Soviet Union hit us with nuclear bombs. 

As for the end of the world, I predict that most of us will be sitting around on January 1, 2013 feeling stupid. Some will be saying that the calculations were slightly off—2013 will be the final year because 13 is unlucky.

In the meantime, my resolution for 2012 and future years is to continue trying to live a life with no regrets, and embrace those who I love because even though I don’t think the entire world is going to end, you never know when an individual’s world will end. Sometimes life is too short, and it is always unpredictable.

Laura Keolanui Stark is making sure she eats dessert first every once in awhile. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.