For my mom’s present this year, We’re All ALIVE! At about 2:10 a.m., I woke to this bizarre very loud cracking, and then a HUGE crash-BOOM and the house shook. I had time to think “what is that cracking? something is breaking…” before the boom-shake. I was sure it came from ToddlerA’s room. I leapt out of bed, turned on the light and when M asked me what was happening all I could say was “something big! something horrible!” as I rushed into her room, flipped on the light, and promptly woke up a peacefully sleeping child. Ask me how the HELL any person could sleep through this and I refer you to my dad, who will tell the story of how I slept through a massive and incredibly loud corvette crash at the end of our driveway which did in fact, knock down a power pole and cause a fire. Go figure.

I put the child back to sleep and ran outside to find the wreck, or spaceship, or armageddon, or whatever it was. I’m flashing my light all around the yard a good 2 minutes before I see the tree. The TREE. IN THE YARD. ON THE GROUND. OKay perhaps it’s not the whole tree. But you have to understand the trees we’re working with here are likely hundreds of years old. This is no suburbian maple tree here.

About a half a giant oak tree up and fell tonight, narrowly missing my kid’s room by I don’t know, inches? I mean, the tree? It is kissing the house. Branches are on the porch below my daughter’s room.

I will post pictures of the tree tomorrow. Happy Birthday, mom! We’re not dead!

(Michael, being the true California native that he is, believed we were having an earthquake.)