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You are here: Home / 2016 Will Never Fucking End

2016 Will Never Fucking End

by | 47 Comments

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There have been nothing but issues with the counters and sink and the shower door and I have been bitching up a storm to my mom, and she texted me that a tree had fallen on my younger brother’s house.

I am going to bed, because I may have to head down and make decisions regarding his house since he is away on vacation, the power company won’t touch the tree because the homeowner is not there, and the insurance agent is no doubt just scheming up ways to figure out how to fuck him.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    Irony Abounds

    All the bad luck goes away at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Or so I am deeply hoping. Otherwise I’m fucked.

    On edit: Sorry about your 2016 and your brother’s house. Damn trees.

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    Holy SHIT. Thank God or FSM or whatever that he wasn’t there. From the tone of this post, it seems no one was hurt. Small blessings.

  6. 6.

    WJS

    That tree looks like it fell from someone else’s property onto the house–isn’t the owner of that property liable here? And it looks like it was a dead tree or one that was on its way to being dead that should have been taken down.

    I used to have 15 trees on my lot and whenever there were high winds, I used to have minor panic attacks. So glad I got rid of that property.

    Oh, damn. When I clicked on the image, you can clearly see it damaged the roof. Hope it’s not too bad.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    I know that some people will dislike it because she was still a theist when she wrote the book, but Julia Sweeney’s memoir God Said, “Ha!” is still one of my favorite books about coping with tragedy. Her brother is diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma and then, about halfway through, she herself is diagnosed with cervical cancer. Being the kind of family they are (i.e. like mine), he immediately starts riding her for trying to steal the cancer spotlight from him. It’s obviously a very sad book by definition, but it’s also very funny.

    (There’s also a film of her one-woman show that was produced by her buddy Quentin Tarantino, but I think the book is a little better because it has some extra stories in it.)

  11. 11.

    Larkspur

    This is a bad thing to have happened and going to bed with your animals around you (hopefully behaving supportively) is a good idea. You’ll re-charge, and then you and your family and (I hope) some nice neighbors will deal with the thing and it’ll be okay. Maybe your brother will have to come stay with you for a few nights, and you can put him to work helping you. And then let Steve interview you both (with pix) and it will be heartwarming and amusing – hell, it’ll be highlarious and in the end everything will be fine. Trust me. I has a feeling about this. One foot/paw in front of the other, and show your work (with the pix). It will be okay.

  12. 12.

    satby

    Well, the larger body of the tree could have hit and messed up the roof trusses like my house was, but this looks like Seth will still have some roof resheathing and gutter repair, bad but not catastrophic hopefully. His insurance should handle it and go after the tree owner’s insurance, or at least that’s how it was handled when the tree demolished the garage at my son’s house in Chicago.
    The good thing is that no one was there or parked in that road to get hurt or killed. Everything else can be repaired.

  13. 13.

    Another Scott

    Yikes! :-( It looks like it could have been much worse (if the previously removed branches had been there, but as mentioned above it looks like the tree should have been taken down long ago). It doesn’t look too bad to these eyes, but the damage at Satby’s house didn’t look that bad to these eyes either … :-(

    Fingers crossed.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    Holy hell! Glad no one was hurt!

    @WJS: Not necessarily. A neighbor’s dead pine tree crushed my sister’s pool cage during one of the aught-4 hurricanes, and she (my sis) was on the hook for 100% of the cost.

  17. 17.

    Yarrow

    I saw this post when it said “2017 will never end” and I thought, “Yeah…” That is just sad.

    Sorry about your brother’s house. What a pain. And what an end to an awful, awful year. I hope you can get it sorted fairly easily.

  21. 21.

    Suzanne

    @Yarrow: I got some sleep, not awesome. It hurts more today. I am trying not to take too many painkillers, but I also do not believe in suffering.

  22. 22.

    Larkspur

    @Yarrow: Yeah, Suzanne, I was wondering how you’re doing as well. I hope the pain pills help with that nasty throbbing pain you get especially with hurt fingers and toes. I’ll bet you said some very rude things when the sledding disaster happened. I don’t know how old your kids are. Were they shocked or were they busy recording it on their phones?

  24. 24.

    HRA

    I don’t see any branches on that tree. Was someone getting ready to take it down or in the process and it fell the wrong way? We had 8 big trees taken down this past summer and ended up with 3 different companies to finish it. I can’t even talk about why. It was such a mess.

    I hope all gets straightened out at the house for you, John.
    HRA

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    The trick with painkillers is to take them on schedule to keep the pain at bay. If you wait until it starts hurting again, the pain will be worse and then you take too many trying to get it to go back down.

  26. 26.

    Larkspur

    @Suzanne: Yep, broken bones and lacerated flesh is what pain pills are made for. Suffering does not make you a finer citizen. Just be kind to yourself.

  28. 28.

    Yarrow

    @Suzanne: Yeah, sometimes the second day is worse. Did they mention icing it at all to keep the swelling down? I don’t know if that would be advised or not.

    Take the painkillers and keep the pain under control. Apparently it’s better to keep the pain under control than it is to let it go and then have to bring it back under control again. It’s easier on your body and brain if you keep the pain down in the first place. See – all the excuse you need to use the good stuff!

  29. 29.

    Calming Influence

    Having had a 200 foot Doug Fir fall from my property directly onto my neighbor’s rental, I’m comfortable classifying what happened to your brother’s house as a “twig incident”.

    Couple 2-buck Walmart tarps and you’re good to go.

  31. 31.

    mai naem mobile

    John – take lots of pics when you get there for insurance purposes in case they try to screw your brother.

  32. 32.

    Calming Influence

    @Calming Influence: Went to the file cabinet just to make sure I had the numbers right: our insurance (Farmers, god bless them) paid out $131,000.

    ETA: and no, I don’t live in a elite enclave. It was just a big fucking tree that hit an average rental house.

  34. 34.

    Mart

    Borrowed a buddies SUV to take daughters stuff to college. 300 year old neighbors tree, ID’d by a tree company as having a dangerous crown and rotted interior crashed down. It destroyed a Camry, Mercedes, Saub, Corvette, and Cadillac. (Cars included mine, a friend visiting for the weekend, and his mother’s.) Amazingly just missed major damage to the house. Neighbor’s insurance did not pay. He lied and said there was a terrible storm and wind blew it down. Ten minutes before it dropped I was having a beer on the driveway with no wind at all. Never figure out how insurance works.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    @Larkspur: Actually, I didn’t say a whole lot. I think I just said, “Ow. OW.” My kids full-on freaked out, as did a couple of spectators. There was kind of a lot of blood—I got it all over the snow and my other hand and my clothes, so I can see why they were so freaked out. They didn’t record it, and they didn’t take pictures until it was cleaned up and stitched. It’s bandaged and splinted now, so you can’t see it.

    It happened up in Flagstaff, and we live in Phoenix, which is about a three-hour drive. So I drove home last night, and everything was fine. My hand was numb from the numbing shot. I didn’t want to take anything until we got home. So I was feeling good, until we got to about Northern Avenue, and then the numbing stuff wore off suddenly. So I drove the last 25 minutes gritting my teeth like sumbitch.

  37. 37.

    CaseyL

    That’s a very strange photo, perspective-wise. The tree looks like it fell from waayyy across the street. Like it really had it in for your brother’s house. So glad he wasn’t in there at the time!

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Gorgeous!

  38. 38.

    Cynn

    I’m organizing a bonfire party tomorrow. Everyone brings their 2016 wall calendars, appointment books, desk calendars, and any generally irritating crap reminiscent of ’16. At 11:00pm, everyone tosses their stuff into the fire so this detestable year cannot sneak back. Burn, baby burn with cocktails!

  40. 40.

    Pogonip

    Sorry to hear you cut your hand, Suzanne.

    I am unhappy about Seth’s house but glad he wasn’t hurt.

  41. 41.

    Larkspur

    @Suzanne: I am sending hugs to your kids, since you need to be careful of full-on hugs till your finger heals. That reminds me: I’m not a health care professional, so my experience is limited, but when I get hurt and it involves bleeding, I get nauseated and light-headed. But I’m able to help just fine when it’s other people’s blood. It’s a more useful set of reactions, but also more embarrassing. I’m guessing you know your own reactions pretty well: you have kids and I don’t. You have much more refined disaster-reaction sensibilities.

  47. 47.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Insurance agents will tell you everything is covered becuase they are working for you. It’s the claim adjuster who will screw you sideways for a nickel because they are working for the underwriter.

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