Brooke Writes Books... and Other Musings...

Okay, I admit it. I am a worry wart. I am getting worse with age. It seems lately that I can take almost any situation and imagine it turning into a major drama. Maybe it is my writer's imagination and creativity coming back in full force (after all, I am buried knee-deep in my current manuscript, madly trying to get it wrapped up...but I digress...though it is one of the things worrying me...). Maybe it's too many irons in the fire what with work at the same break-neck pace it's been the three years I've toiled there, trying to finish said manuscript, and other commitments (been practicing saying "no" lately...) coupled with some personal issues. Or, I suppose it's possible I'm just a dork. However, I am going with a combination of the three.

But sometimes my nutty worries pan out. Case in point yesterday... sorta...

My neighbors own this flimsy gazebo-tent deal set up in their backyard. You know the kind: has the plastic tarp material in green and white covering the top and is held up by the flimsy poles. They've had it installed there since they moved in last winter. During the rain storms, the wind would often lift it up, and tilt it towards their house. I wondered if it might lift enough to crash into their large sliding glass window and break it.

But since it was in their backyard, and blowing towards their sliding glass window, I didn't give it much thought. Except to note how ugly it was when looking out my den window...

Then one day last winter, the wind shifted and it looked like it could blow my way...and horrors!...crash into the side of my house, take out part of my roof, maybe even my den and living room windows. But I pushed those evils thoughts aside because the ugly gazebo appeared to be anchored. And it would have to jump a six foot fence...

Well, between that time and yesterday, it must have come unanchored and taken pole vaulting lessons..

It's been unseasonably hot and humid here the past couple of days acting more like weather we get in late August. I was minding my own business, trying to stay cool, pounding away at my manuscript attempting to rack up the page count as I hurtle towards "the end"...sorry...digressing again... when I noticed that the wind had picked up. We are not talking a breeze here. We are talking huge, nasty wind gusts. Trees bending wickedly towards the ground. Leaves flying through the air with the greatest of ease. Dust everywhere. Scary wind. (They have a name for them...just can't think of what it is...and no, it's not tornado...)

All of a sudden, the ugly green and white gazebo lifts into the air...and then settles back down. It lifts into the air again, and settles back down. Hmmm....I think to myself. Surely it can't blow over a six foot fence. You are such a dork for even thinking that it could.

A third time, it lifted straight into the air, high enough I could see the feet bottoms, tilted to its side like a missile and flew (not very slowly!) towards the fence, its pointed nose on a direct path for my den window. As it cleared the fence, I backed out of the room, hoping my computer would be okay. Damn, I sure wished I'd backed up that last chapter, I think to myself...

And then...the last metal pole-leg got hung up on the fence...and the poor, ugly green and white gazebo dangled over onto my vegetable garden. It flopped in the wind, trying to escape. Lickety-split I ran outside, and put it out of its misery by taking off the ballooning green and white tarp while trying not to get gored by the poles.

There the gazebo carcass remained until this morning when my neighbor discovered its disappearance from his patio. "Geez!" he exclaims as he peers over the fence at his ruined gazebo (it sustained a mortal wound in the manner of a broken pole during its attempted escape to my yard). "That could've gone into your window and broken it!"

Hmmm...Maybe I can delete "dork" from my list of the reasons I've become a worry-er...