Last week, the Phoenix are was hit with a major wind storm. Dan and I happened to be home at the same time, which is a rarity in itself. Add the winds up to 68 mph and the downpour of rain, and you’ve got a perfect example of the world ending.

For you Phoenix residents, “rain” is that wet stuff falling from the sky. No, not the misters on your patio. That stuff that floods our streets and makes our roof leak.

Anyway, during this storm the wind made our windows rattle to the point that Dan opened the blinds even though it was pitch black outside. His logic was that “if something comes flying at the window, I want to be able to see death approaching.” This was interrupted by me whimpering “I don’t want to die” when something loud crashed outside.

We awoke in the morning to find a tree sprawled across the backyard. We were lucky that A)the tree was not larger and thus did not hit the house, B)the tree did not break anything besides an old plant pot and C)the tree was not full of spiders that crawled away, fleeing the storm and the sudden crashing of their natural home, came through our doggy door and infested our house.

These are the sorts of scenarios I think up when I’m tired and scared, and there’s a major storm outside.

The insurance people wanted pictures so I figured I’d show you guys some photos too. Here’s a before picture. For the record, I did not take a random photo of our backyard. This is from the wedding 3 years ago. So the tree is was (RIP) a little bigger than you see here. It’s the tree on the right.

And after:

It’s been a week and the tree is still there. I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen to it. Thankfully, my dad is taking care of the getting rid of the tree and all the insurance stuff. It’ll probably stay exactly where it is until he comes home on Sunday for the holidays.

Being an adult is hard.

My parents used to mention grandkids a lot. It started a little after we had gotten married until my parents realized that they didn’t want to feel old and be called “grandma” or “grandpa.” The baby mumblings quieted down significantly until about a year ago. Suddenly, every other conversation ended up being steered towards children in some way. Not that they were pressuring me to have kids, of course. They just wanted to tell me the funny/cute/endearing story about the baby/toddler/child they saw. No ulterior motive, of course.

I finally told them that we wanted to wait until I was done with school before we even began thinking about kids. This appealed to their logic and they promised not to mention grandkids to me until May of 2010. However, my parents are sneakier than I give them credit for.

My aunt casually texts me to say that I should have kids. If they had grandbabies, my parents might have flown out from Texas for Thanksgiving.

My sister visits them and calls me to say “they talked about babies like ALL weekend. I think they want you to start having kids.”

Instead of harassing me directly, my parents are using relatives and other loved ones to pass along baby musings. I guess they technically kept their word, since they never said anything to me directly. The next time I use loopholes to get my way, however, Dan will know that the trait comes from both sides of my family.

A few months ago, I started playing Farm Town in Facebook. I got bored after awhile because I didn’t log on often enough to harvest my crops and they would die between visits. So I finally decided to move out of the farm. Since then, all of my in-laws have become obsessed started their own farms. During a recent visit, Dan’s mom described to me in great detail what her farm looks like. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, she logged on to give me a visual tour of her farm. I have attached it here for your viewing pleasure, with the major tour highlights. The trees are not visible because she doesn’t want visiting harvesters to steal the fruit – the trees look prettier with fruit on them. Other than that, everything is there.

While viewing this, please keep in mind that A) her daughter’s family lives on the East Coast, B) she discusses in great detail the gardener and his kids and C) she discusses farm layout problems as if they are real-life issues that could effect the grandkids’ safety. Click on the image for a close up.

I now present to you my husband’s farm. For the record, he doesn’t have any trees because (this is a direct quote) “banana trees smell.”

 
All of the them log on at night to harvest their farms, chat together and talk smack about their pretend farms. When Mom saves a crop of pineapples for harvesting, Jen and Dan bicker over who gets to do it. At night, instead of seeing WOW on Dan’s computer, I see Farm Town. This is often accompanied with him giggling at something one of them has said or grumbling about how long it takes to plow.

I could not make this stuff up, if I tried.