OMG!

here comes the hurricane! my husband is out of town...he left on saturday for a short deployment and should be back mid august. on saturday, as we were leaving the parking lot miriam tripped running around the car, hit her head on the open car door and busted her outer ear open. so we went directly from saying goodbye to daddy to the emergency room. (more on that later) i thought, oh here it comes, whats next? three short days later a storm knocked down about half of a huge tree that we have, into the neighbor's and our yard. a major annoyance when there is a man home, because then he has to spend a good deal of the weekend sawing it up. but a real headache without a man around. yes, i am sure i could use a chainsaw, but is it really a practical idea with three small children running around the yard? and all the tree people are extremely busy because it has been a very stormy year. i actually got one answering machine that said "hi, we are overwhelmed by work and cannot get to your problems, we are sorry. if you are one of our regular customers, please call us at this number." i managed to find one guy to come out and give me an estimate and he wants $300 to clean up the mess, but recommends that i pull out the whole tree to the tune of $500 and he is going to leave the stump. he says he is just too busy to bother with it, but he could come out in a couple of months and take care of the stump for a mere $75 more dollars. one of my neighbors had an estimate last year for an entire tree removal stump and all for $200. i know there has been crazy inflation in the last six months, but i really think the hike is because they are so busy. supply and demand, right? and good for them, really, they deserve to make as much money as the market can bear, i mean these are laborers, mostly very small business owners. the man who came by to give the estimate was Frank, of (you guessed it) Franks tree service. dont get me started on michael eisner and his $495 million stock options package or whatever, but good for Frank that he can get $600 instead of $200 for a tree removal. unfortunately, though, I can't/won't pay it. so it will be a few more days before i figure out what i am going to do. I'm sure it involves a lot of work or some begging on my part!