Things were going fairly badly this last weekend. My several hundred dollar chain saw died before Friday’s storm, which not only was a loss of that amount, but prevented me from making money clearing trees for the thousands who had trees down (about every other house on our street, for instance). A huge tree from our yard was uprooted and crushed our neighbor’s shed, and I was trying to find out our home-owner’s insurance deductible (but the insurance company was closed for the weekend). Our power went out, and hundreds of dollars of food was spoiling in our fridge and freezer. We had no air conditioner or fans or ice on the very week the tempurature decided to climb above 100F. My mower stopped working in the middle of cutting a lawn on Saturday, and I had no way of getting it up the steep ramp into the back of my truck (it weighs 500 lbs.). I had to finish the 1 acre lot with my push mower (in said heat). We had no internet to know what was going on (when the power would be back on, for instance), and my brother, undeterred by our lack of electricity, suddenly showed up in town for a visit (from the West coast)… we offered him warm orange juice and a candle to use the bathroom. In this sweltering heat, we soon found out the electricity would be out for a week.
The financial hit was troubling me most as I have been unable to drum up enough clients to make my summer mowing economically feasible for us. On Monday, I reached State Farm and found out that since this was an “act of God,” my neighbor’s insurance would be responsible to cover the costs. My wife and I had been planning to visit a nearby friend (her “step-aunt” I guess) to celebrate the 4th and spend the night. When they found out our electricity was down, they very graciously opened their home to us and allowed us to pack our refrigerated food into their fridge and freezer. So here we sit in a beautiful lakeside house for the week, forced to have a vacation we could never afford. As we were packing up to drive down here, Kimberly brought out a netbook she had but never uses. I forgot it was around, and suddenly I realized I have the replacement for my laptop (which I’ve been badly missing for 2 months) only smaller and so much handier. I figured out how to get the mower onto my truck (backing it up to a bank where I had towed my mower and pushing it in on the level ramp), and on Monday I was able to fix it with a $6 spring. All in all, the week has been a wonderful refresher.
Janathan Grace Reflections 
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