Look what blew in on the wind...

 It sure wasn't Mary Poppins or a farm house from Kansas. We had a bad storm blow in off the ocean last Thursday. There were two rotating cells that straddled us and therefore we were in a tornado warning. Sam was bugging out but I told him, "Listen, I grew up in tornado alley. You don't need to worry until I tell you to haul ass to the basement." It wasn't that bad out. I was cooking while I was watching the weather unfold and I was watching the track of the closest rotating cell that was tracking right next to us across Point Lookout and heading to Bay Colony, which is in our backyard out on the bay. The wind was fierce, the waves high, the lightening was flashing, the sky dark...but alas no tornado formed. At one point, just after it had passed, I went outside to see how the ropes on the boat were doing. The new weigh system that holds the boat away from the dock worked great but I was worried that one of the ropes would break because it was a little bit older than the other ropes. I opened the patio door on to the deck and suddenly heard this loud "WHAM", then again..."WHAM"...then again. I booked it down to the bulkhead to discover one of the large 5 mile per hour buoys broke loose from its chain and was slamming with each wave into our neighbors bulkhead. The waves were large and those buoys are heavy. I leaned over the edge and discovered that the thing was leaving huge marks....not good. Now, bulkheads are expensive to repair, our neighbors were not home and I knew I had to do something. I ran in the house and told Emily that I needed her to come outside in the rain with me...in case I fell in the water or something while I was dinking around with the damn marker.
I grabbed a length of rope from the garage, ran back out, got on my knees and tried grabbing the buoy from the front when the wave pushed it into the bulkhead. I got ahold of the metal bar inside the top but let go once I realized I couldn't hold it when the wave pulled back. I then walked onto the ramp onto the dock, got on my knees and leaned way out through the bars to grab the buoy from the side. That was a little easier, because I could sway with the buoy but even then I had to release the buoy a few times before I managed to get the rope in the top and looped off. I hauled the buoy away from the front of the bulkhead and tied it to the cleat on the side of the neighbors dock. It was bouncing against the dock but not with the force that it had been hitting the bulkhead and I knew it was cheaper to replace the side board on the dock than reface the bulkhead.
I was soaked from the rain and spray off the water. I went inside and checked my dinner and then I was going to run next door to leave a note about the buoy. Paula must have just arrived home because I saw her car was in the driveway. I rang the bell. She tried to get me to come in but I refused to drip all over her home. I explained what I did and she was so funny. She said, "Annette to the rescue again." and thanked me for taking care of it. She said Jeff wouldn't be home until late and she would not have known what to do and even if she did, would have been to scared to do what I did. I'm not much of a nervous Nelly, that is for sure. Anyway, I went out the next morning and took a picture of the buoy...for blogging sake. Let's face it...I have not been blogging lately. Things have been crazy. I have not done a single craft. I did read a book though, which I placed on the Bloggers Book Club. I just have been in such a rut with everything around here. It's never ending. I'm in the whole, "don't say anything if you can't say something nice" mode. That is why I have been MIA. I'm about to the point where I have to start venting or I will burst. The back of the house was resided in hopes that they could keep the house from leaking. Well, lets just say, that during the storm, I used ever single spare towel in the house. We had leaks in the same spots. One spot was far less severe but the dining room bay window was terrible. The guys are coming back on Tuesday. They are taking a garden hose to the back of the house, until they find where the water is getting in. The upstairs bathroom didn't leak once while the cabinets were off the wall....BUT once the cabinet was secured and every thing was about finished, water from the shower started pouring onto our new stove through our new cabinet and right over the front of our new convection microwave. YES, Murphy's Law is residing at our house until further notice. So, please, take advantage of this and get all of your important projects done while we entertain the doom and gloom here. Act fast, because one of these days our house guest is going to get sick of us and move on to its next victim. Until then, I will continue to shuffle around the house shouting, CALGON...TAKE ME AWAY!" and pouting when more stuff goes wrong. I usually just try to laugh our disasters off....but I'm way beyond that at this point. The humor has left the building, people. It's like I live in a giant cocoon and it looks strangely like a lemon.