The septic system is acting up and I am running around looking for leaks in the roof and making sure the garage is not flooding. Luckily they canceled work because, since daycare is closed due to lack of power, at least one of us needed to stay home and neither of us can afford the leave.
There are 10-foot branches dropping off into my neighbor's yard and several of his trees are swaying alarmingly. Many of them have dropped their leaves already so I am pretty sure their waterlogged root balls will stay anchored in the ground for the duration of the storm and not be torqued out of the earth by the hundreds like they were during Hurricane Isabel.
All of these “problems” are disgustingly minor, though, compared to the issue one of my 80-year-old neighbors had this morning.
He went out to get the morning paper (in the wind and the rain and the dark). As he was bending over to fetch it off the ground a gust of wind blew him over into the muddy water, half-in and half-out of his ditch out front. In his dark blue rain slicker and jeans he was not noticed for over an hour as he lay there yelling and trying to power through his joint problems to get enough traction to climb the slippery slope back to the gravel driveway. He says that several cars drove right by him probably on their way to work. They must have passed only feet away from where he was struggling.
After the sun had come up sufficiently to see, my wife looked out the window at the weather and noticed what looked like a figure slowly making their way on hands and knees up his driveway. We are a couple hundred feet from his house so we could not tell who it was or what they were doing (troubleshooting the septic system, digging a trench to guide floodwater away from the house, etc.). I donned my boots and jacket and grabbed my cell phone and went out and help whoever was out there do whatever they thought they were doing that was so damned important to do in this weather.
As I walked out into the street I saw another neighbor who had just gotten off night shift dash across the road to the old man's house. The younger neighbor started yelling “Help! Help!” and I ran over and helped the old man the last few feet into the garage and called 911.
He was more disoriented, embarrassed, and wet than genuinely injured, although he did have a small bump and cut on his forehead from the fall. The paramedic arrived within five minutes which is pretty impressive even when you don't have the extra problems of trees down in the roads and flooding all throughout the region. The old man's wife was awakened (she slept through this whole episode) and the other neighbor and I left so she and the paramedic could get him into some dry clothes.
He will be fine.
I walked back home and told my wife and son how much I love them.
By the way, I am no longer angry about not getting my table saw right away.
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