This past Saturday was supposed to be awesome. My aunt and grandmother had come up to my house for a visit in the early afternoon and because they have been hard at work cleaning out my grandmother’s attic they brought me some goodies, including a turquoise toybox that sat in my bedroom when I was very young. It has a rip in the top and should probably be recovered, but it has a lot of special meaning to me.

After my family left, I settled in to tackle a gigantic workload. I had a few posts I wanted to finish up and post here and I had a lot of fresh ideas for posts that I wanted to start. My creative juices were flowing and I was motivated. As a blogger who focuses on this website full-time “blogger fatigue” is a feeling that I know well, and because of that I get excited when I sit down with every intention of going above and beyond my normal day-to-day tasks and getting creative with what I do here. But I never did end up getting everything that I had set out to do accomplished… because a truck crashed into my house.

On Saturday at about 6pm, a large truck was driving down the street I live on, going well above the speed limit. The truck rear-ended a smaller truck, sending it speeding 100 yards down the street–through a wooden fence, down the side of a small hill on the side of my house, completely uprooting a tree, and crashing directly into the side of my house under the front porch.

I was sitting at the kitchen table in the midst of blog posts and a list of things I wanted to get done when I heard what was either the smaller truck being rear-ended or the weight of the truck being forced over the curb. I looked out the kitchen window to see the truck careening through everything in its path and into my house. My fiance was asleep at the time and woke up in a state of complete and utter panic. When the truck collided with our house, everything shook; shelves fell over, things fell out of medicine cabinets and cupboards, furniture moved, everything was chaos. When he was woken up by all of the commotion, his first thought was that something truly horrible had happened, and because I began screaming for him as soon as the truck hit, he thought I was hurt. He has been having nightmares ever since.

I wasn’t hurt, thankfully. Because I have had anxiety for many years as it is, I did have a panic attack when I looked outside and saw the truck embedded in the side of our house, but I am physically fine. The man who was driving the truck that crashed into our house was breathing when the ambulance arrived, but he was unresponsive and unable to move. He was taken to the hospital and last we heard is in critical condition.

The bigger truck that rear-ended the truck that wound up in the side of our house ended up inside of our neighbor’s house, taking out their entire living room. The lady who lives there just so happened to be visiting family out of state at the time of the crash, which is so fortunate because she could have been killed had she been sitting in her living room when the truck crashed into it. The man who was driving the bigger truck has already been found at fault for the entire chaotic and horrible mess.

And it has been horrible.

While we were very lucky to have less damage to our house than our neighbor, we do still have a lot of damage. The truck completely took out our electrical box and left a huge hole in the side of our house. We had our power shut off at house- and pole-level before the truck was even removed and we have been staying with my fiance’s parent’s since Saturday night. We have had the insurance claims adjuster, contractors, and an electrician out already and every time we talk to one of these people we just get more less-than-ideal news about when we can even inhabit our house again.

The truck ended up hitting our outer wall on our lowest level that is part of the area of the house where our oil drums are located. On just the inside of that area of the house is where our furnace and hot water heater is located. The bright side as far as when we can resume living in our house is that we have already had an electrician put up a temporary electrical box. Once it is inspected by the borough and the power company can come out and hook us up again at pole-level, we will have power in the house. Unfortunately, once the contractors and masons begin their work, in order to access the affected area of the house that needs to be repaired, they have to move our furnace and hot water heater and re-route a lot of our pipes. What that means for us is that while we may have temporary power, we may not have running water. We still don’t know how long it will be before any of that work begins, due to it almost being summer and a very busy time for masons, but I’m not looking forward to being displaced again for we don’t even know how long.

Honestly, this entire incident has left me exhausted and beyond frustrated. However, I am trying to remain as positive as possible. After all, our house received less damage than our neighbor’s. We still have a living room. We were not hurt and we have family who love us and who have opened their home to us. It could have been worse. It can always be worse. Homeowner’s insurance rocks and in time the home I fell in love with at first sight will be repaired. Someday this whole series of events will feel so far away and I am really looking forward to when that happens.

Needless to say, I have been a little behind on getting posts up and answering emails, but I’d say that I have a really great excuse, don’t you think?