Roofing and Rainfall

          You may have noticed that I have not posted on the blog for 8 days now. The house needs a new roof. It has needed one for more than a year now, but I spent last summer and fall trying to patch some smaller leaks and thought I had them fixed. Over the winter I found I was wrong. We have had a very wet spring, too wet, which is unusual for this area. July was one of the rainiest July's in our history. I waited for August to begin so the weather would be nice and dry as it has always been. My son in law Rhett and I prepared to tackle the huge job starting on August second. It turned out as of this moment we have been rained out two times in one week, with a total of over four inches of rain, an unheard of amount of rain in this short time for August. 

          Last Thursday the weather prediction was for some scattered showers overnight. It turned out we had severe thunderstorms with high winds that lifted and twisted the tarps on the roof and instead of keeping the rain out, funneled rain in over the kitchen and had Joyce and I up at five AM emptying buckets until seven. Saturday Rhett and I got up on the roof and just got started working after checking the weather forecast and seeing zero chance of rain, when another storm rolled in and sent us scrambling to recover the tarps and get off the roof. That cost us another few hours of delay. 

          We made two trips to the landfill this week dumping 1900 pounds of shingles on one and 1700 on the second. The landfill was a horrid place; it just reeks in its own special way. The bulldozers were busy shoving trash up into ever larger piles as new things were added. They were passing by so close to me that I thought I might get swept up and over with the trash. 

          Sunday morning I was so exhausted I could not function on a physical or mental level. I usually work between 3.5 to 4.5 hours a day on my farm chores and then rest, but this last week I have worked with Rhett 10 or so hours a day and apparently not slept very well. Rhett worked for a few hours on Sunday, but the heat was excessive and the shingles were so stuck together he was afraid he would tear them rather than separate them, so he quit for the day. 

          This morning another storm rolled in at three AM, with high winds and non-stop lightening. It woke both Joyce and I up. She went back to bed at four, while I was up until five-thirty before sleeping until eight-thirty. While there is not much funny about this, it is not the worst thing we have experienced. In 1975 we tore a roof off 85 miles north of here in August and brought in rain like we had never seen before. One night rain poured in all over the house. I slept under a shower curtain as rain poured into the bedroom. Now I am so jumpy I find it difficult to sleep whenever there is rain coming down. 

          We are still not half way done, but someday, sometime the roof will be done and we can proudly say, "We did it!"