The Positive Side

Last week Tasmania had some severe storms.  We aren't used to big storms like they get in other parts of Australia, but it reminded us a lot of the cyclone that we experienced in Queensland last year.  The winds were so strong one night that none of us could sleep.  Kobe ended up in bed with me, and I was awake for hours listening to the house rattle.

I really wasn't worried about it at all, as I thought our house was pretty strong so I went off to work the next morning having a little laugh about our garden arch which had been blown over during the night.  I was going to make a joke about it on Instagram and say that we had a casualty from the storm, but forgot about doing it (sorry about the dodgy photos off my phone).

As soon as I got to work I got a phone call from Jalen who I had just dropped off.  The power was off at school and all the kids were being sent home.  Because the winds were so strong, none of the students were allowed to walk home.  I couldn't pick him up, so he had to wait to get a lift home.  Later in the morning I rang to check to see if he had made it home, and he was at home and he told me that one of our outside windows which was part of a back patio was broken.

I told him not to stress because it could be fixed, and said that I would come and check on it at lunch time.  When I got home I could see why he was so stressed.    The winds were still strong that it was even scary running home, because I was worried that I was going to get hit on the head by a tree.   Many trees had come down at school and we had heard that there had been a fatality.   The window had been blown right out of the frame and the movement had caused all the glass in it to crack. 

Our friend Alison was at the house with Jay which was great, because he was pretty stressed.  We went outside to see if we could somehow (by a miracle!) get it back into place.  I kicked it a few times before I decided it was way too dangerous, as every time I would get it in a little, the wind would catch it again and it would just fly further out.  I had to leave and go back to work (as school was actually sending students home early as it just wasn't safe to be at school), so I had to leave Jay and Alison at home to deal with it. 

I knew Jay was really stressed about it, and I was worried it was going to flip right around and smash into my windows in the sunroom and break those as well. There was nothing that we could do at that time to fix it, because the wind was just too strong and wasn't going to die down any time soon. 

I told Jay to just get busy doing something to keep his mind off it as much as possible, and to know that the worst that could happen is that we would have a few broken windows, and if and when that happens, we would just deal with it.   I reminded him that it could be worse and hoped that he could not stress about it too much while I was gone. 

About ten minutes later I found out from Alison that the window just flipped right off and fell to the ground, with the glass intact! I actually didn't care at all that it had fallen down, but was just relieved that it was now down and didn't end up breaking any of our sunroom windows. 

Earlier this year I switched insurance companies and have been worried about how they would be, because they were a lot cheaper than the previous company I was with.  Since the window was damaged I have had many phone calls from them, they sent someone to clear it away straight away and have had three visits from people sent by the company to deal with it.  It's going to take a little while till it is fixed, but I told the guy who was sent by the insurance company today how I was just so glad that we didn't have any more damage. 

He actually seemed surprised that I was 'happy' about it and said 'it's good you can see the positive side' and I told him that it could've been a lot worse and really we were very lucky.  It's a pain as I  have to pay an excess to get it fixed, but really that's the least of my worries.  What I've learnt over the past three years is that things like broken windows really don't matter. 

People die.   People get killed by trees falling on them.  People have heart attacks right before your eyes.  That's hard.  I can deal with a broken window any day.