My Husband

Recently, we had a large amount of rainfall, which caused a HUGE pine tree in our neighbor’s yard to up-root and fall on the power lines, narrowly missing the house next door to us. The tree vs. power line sparked a fire, took out power lines…brought all the neighbors outside in their pajamas… you get the picture. We did not have power from 7 in the morning until late in the evening. (Let me mention here that it was a freezing cold rainy day… minus no power …equals no heat in the house… thankfully we have a fireplace…). Several – and by several I mean 50 APS (Arizona Public Service) crew members worked without stopping from early a.m. to well in to the dark night in the driving freezing rain to put in new power poles and lines for our neighbors.

It affected us because the main power utility box is on the power pole in our yard. Next to this main utility box on the power pole in our back yard is a HUGE pine tree. Our pine tree is easily 100 feet tall **can’t make that up** and it is Dangerously close to the power pole. This said pine tree also excretes pine sap on everything in our back yard…..which really makes my husband fussy.

Wednesday evening, my husband told me that he figured out what to do with the pine tree. He planned on renting scaffolding, and then he would take our chain saw up on that scaffolding and cut the big limbs off little by little. He even went so far as to drag me out to the back yard to show me how brilliant his idea was.

Thursday a.m. I called APS and spoke to a lovely woman named Gloria. I told her No big emergency… and I explained what had happened during the storm, and with all the high winds we have been experiencing I was concerned about the big tree. I totally left out the part where my husband is fussy about the sap and was going to try and kill himself on scaffolding with a chain saw and set fire to the neighborhood, all in the name of tree trimming. During my conversation with Gloria. She mentioned that APS is on call 24/7/365. I said “that’s nice could you have your forestry division call me about cutting down the tree?”

Aaaaabout 20 minutes later, I received a call from an APS guy letting me know that he WAS AT MY HOUSE assessing the tree. We chatted about the tree, he recalled being on my street during the freezing rain event. Yada yada. I had to leave work early because Dave and I had tickets to the D-backs ( who totally swept Colorado). When I arrived home I noticed that our power pole was leaning. Upon further inspection, someone from APS had dug hole beside the power pole and then wrote something on my gravel driveway, in short hand with spray paint. Two APS trucks rolled up about then. Two BIG APS trucks! I chatted with them about the freaking tree and they said they were there because of the power pole. Apparently and CLEARLY it was a larger problem because they discovered the pole had rotted at the base. Dave and I let them know we would not be home and were on our merry way to the D-backs game. We left at 3:00 p.m. (Let me mention again how our D-backs swept the Colorado Rockies....).

We arrived home after midnight and while our street is rural, cozy and quiet, it was now eerily dark.

Except for bright, bright lights from our back yard.

APS had cut the power to our entire neighborhood right after we left **I’m sure our neighbors loved that** and power wasn’t restored until 2:00 a.m. this morning, which is when the crews left our yard. 2:00 a.m. this morning.. yes! We have a new power pole. And the tree? Still there.

To be continued….