Post-Matthew blues

  ©2016 Lydia Hinshaw

Part of what was removed from our backyard

 ORMOND BEACH, FL -- Tuesday we waited for the Internet guy.  Wednesday we waited for the insurance adjuster.  Thursday we waited for the garage-door repairman.

 And we are waiting for the mounds of yard trash to be picked up off our street.

 I wrote a couple of large checks, and Prince Charming put a big charge on his credit card.  In the crazy world of Florida homeowners' insurance, nothing will be covered, because the hurricane deductible is two percent of the insured amount, which means we would need more than $4,000 in damages before we could collect a penny.

  The deductible is per year, not per hurricane, so we needed to get our damage recorded in case there's another of these monsters lurking out there that could push us over the top.

 The cash laid out for yard cleanup doesn't count because that isn't damage, the adjuster explained to me.  After the last bad hurricanes, in 2004, we did our own cleanup, but we were both 12 years younger then, and the Prince wasn't recovering from cancer treatments and surgeries. This time we arranged for it to be done by phone from New England.

 So here we are, thankful that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  The two holes in our roof are fixed, as is the garage door, which had our second car trapped inside for a day after we got home early Tuesday afternoon.

 The weather has turned a bit cooler, and we were able to have a picnic by the river at lunchtime.  Life is pretty good.