Country Livin'

Or - the day the house turned on a dime.

Actually, it wasn't a dime, and the house only shifted a bit.

For those of you not so well-acquainted with living down de bayou, this may not be as amusing I awoke not too early after being up rather later than usual. I was still waiting for the coffee to brew when the house shook, glass shattered, and the cat leapt across the den and flew headfirst into the closed bedroom door. She was too frightened to realize the door wasn't open, attempting a failed quick retreat to the safety of the bedroom closet.

After the initial moment of complete stupefaction, I began making the rounds, inspecting the windows, pondering "whatthehell hit my house!?"

I wasn't stunned that the house had been hit. These things seem to happen here with alarming regularity. I've known folks to install posts in the ground across the front of their homes to keep cars from plowing through their bedrooms. I've personally had vehicles fly from one side of my front yard to the other, damaging only the driveways on either side before rolling to a stop in the ditch. The same ditch that has hosted a cane truck turned on it's side and a pickup truck whose driver was epileptic and should probably not have been driving at all. Admittedly, each of these was a one-time experience, but my thinking has become "if it could happen once, it could happen again". And it has often enough to prove the exception.

So, I live in expectation.

It wasn't until I went outside that I was able to locate the source of the noise and apparent glass breakage. In one of those freakish moments that happen frequently during the grinding season in rural southern Louisiana, a tire had escaped a moving 18-wheeled sugar cane truck, had flown/rolled/crashed into the corner of my house, and had shoved a column of brick away from the outside wall. It also split some wood and send decorative objects flying across the dining room - the source of the breaking glass in the one room I had yet to inspect.

So, I spent the next hour, rocking on the front porch, cup of hot coffee in hand, and watched the Keystone Cops try to figure "wha' happened?"

Gotta love this country livin'!