Sunday

Well here it is Monday morning and what started out as a great day on Sunday turned into an evening of concern. The night before or early Sunday found Nancy waking me up out of a deep sleep with the fear of a tornado striking the cabin, actually I believe it was just heavy rain and maybe some hail, at least it lasted no more than 15 minutes; anyhow the "Hillybilly patch" on the roof held and there were no drips. I thought I had a solution to the problem and didn't see any need to do further adjustments to the "patch."

We headed off to Cornerstone for worship after our bowl of oatmeal and were greeted like celebrities; lots of sweet hugs and handshakes. I was asked by many if we suffered any damage to the cabin from the severe winter weather. I explained our situation and how our friend Andy the "roof man" who along with his family are in our small group at Cornerstone was going to make the repair on Monday if the material was available. How sweet is was as many offered to check on our place next winter. It seems this type of damage was widespread through the county from the tremendous ice and snow build up on roofs; along with lots of gutters that were knocked down as well. We headed to our "mountain mom" Helen's place after church for a visit as we missed her on Friday when she brought the modem by the cabin before we arrived.

After a short visit we headed home and snacked until it was time to head over to Andy"roof man" Dalton's farm for supper and a get together with many in our small group. Andy had 2 deer hams on the smoker along with slabs of baby back pork ribs. There was all kind of delicious homemade dishes and dessert, yikes it a good thing there is plenty of work to do here to work off this good eatin'. We were entertained with the new Taj Mahal chicken coup and pen(will take a picture next time) Andy built for his many different breeds of chickens. Nancy took off down through the pasteur with a group to see their horses and new Alpaca, Fonzy. After eating we(boys) renewed our winning ways of whupping' the gals in Sequence and we even had a rookie to the game, Ted on our team. He caught on fast!!!

We headed home a little before 10 PM in a driving rain storm with lightening everywhere only to find when we entered the cabin water running out of the bathroom and into the basement, the "patch" obviously had its limits in the driving hard rain. We quickly found lots of garbage cans, buckets and towel's to clean up but the water continued to stream in through the bathroom and now was exiting through the overhead light fixtures. I turned off the circuit breakers and now had a new fear of a electrical short causing a fire. Needless to say it was sleepless in Sparta, actually Glade Valley. I spent the better part of the night trying to think of a solution to stop the water that was running off the steep pitch of the roof into the jagged tear which was stuffed with plastic bags, etc. In hindsight I should have used the old standby gray duct tape to cover the hole and possibly saved the water from running down into the cabin. I grew up on hay baling wire, twine and duct tape to temporarily mend many problems. Oh well!! Finally at day break I could stand it no longer so I tied a rope around my waist with Nancy keeping some tension on the rope so I wouldn't slide into the abyss and crawled out onto the roof; I managed to refit the patch which helped a little in slowing the drip into the bathroom, now there is 2 slowed drips where before it was flowing pretty steady.

The rain is steady now, but not a gully washer so we are thankful for that but the forecast calls for rain all day and evening until sometime tomorrow. We are just thankful we decided to come early this year for many reasons to check out the cabin and are we glad we did. The rain is a welcome relief to the gardens and flower beds only wish it would come again another day, LATER