Posted 9/2/2016 3:45 PM (GMT 0)
Kind of a rough night last night, here in north central Florida. Up most of the night, listening to the howling wind outside, as hurricane Hermine rolled through. It came through just a bit to the northwest of Gainesville, where I am.
Despite all the usual preparations (I've been making them for years) it's always tense when a 'cane comes through, even a Category 1. A sudden gust of wind (common with any size hurricane) can snap a tree branch (sometimes a large one) and bring it down into the yard. And with the yard full of trees that I have (especially slash pines, which can snap like toothpicks in a heavy wind) it's something I always have to worry about whenever it's hurricane time.
And that's exactly what happened last night, around 2 AM. In fact I heard it. SNAP THUMP. Outside with flashlight into the heavy, pelting rain. And there it was, a large (maybe 15 feet long, and maybe close to 50-60 pounds) pine branch, needles and all, lying there on the ground about ten feet from and parallel to the driver's side of my Chevy Malibu.
Ten feet! Ten feet the other way, and I would have been on the phone with my insurance company first thing this morning.
I guess the reason I'm talking about this right now, and made this thread, is the realization that came to me as I was standing there in the rain, and as I got back inside the house, thinking about it, about how often just a matter of feet can make all the difference in the world between a close call (whew!) and a serious hassle to make things right again.
Maybe it's a natural event, as I'm describing here, or maybe it's even a health issue, such as fighting this beast, or something else serious or something trivial. Maybe life truly is, as they say about football, a "game of inches." Or maybe it's a game of tissue millimeters, or radiation grays (just a few more, or just a few less), or maybe one or two more milliliters of some drug. Sometimes it seems like that's all it takes to make all the difference in the world.
Maybe there's a thread here, about how just a few inches, or just a small something else, made all the difference in the outcome of something important in somebody's life. Maybe it had something to do with PCa where just a few somethings made all the difference in the world.
Wow, ten feet the other way!
It's still raining here this morning, but it's just light rain, follow-up stuff. By this afternoon the sun will be out again, the birds will be singing, and it will all be as if nothing happened. Except a pine tree in my yard will be missing one of its branches.
As if nothing at all happened.