Bringing the house down

Last night, my friend Mindy invited me over for fried chicken, homemade per Alton Brown. Since fried chicken is not something I eat regularly, I was there. And to add to the southern-ness of the meal, I made homemade peach cobbler. It was heavenly. We tried to healthy up the meal with salad and squash, but I think that was just a ploy to confuse our cholesterol.

After dinner and straightening up the table, we were looking at Mindy’s newest Pampered Chef catalog, because I’m a bit obsessed by them and Mindy’s a consultant. Meanwhile, I was also searching the depths of my mind for something fun and low-key we could go do that I could persuade Mindy to join me in doing. Like going to Fido’s. Which was the only thing I could come up with.

So we’re just sitting there when we hear this house-shaking crash. Mindy looks at me, “What was that? Was it thunder or was that something falling?”

It wasn’t storming; I knew that. And that had to have been something falling. “No, that was something falling,” I said. So we looked through the house for anything that could have fallen and made that noise. We went out on the patio Mindy and Wendi share with their landlady who lives on the other side of the duplex. Nothing out of place. Mindy knocks on Ms. Rudy’s door, because we’re now convinced she’s fallen and needs our help. No answer.

Let me stop at this point in the story and say something about Mindy’s neighborhood. I love Mindy’s neighborhood. It’s not far from Green Hills, and the houses are all from the 1950s and have a historical air and lived in feel. Trees are everywhere, big, huge, old trees, and some of the neighbors have outrageously, beautiful flower gardens that somehow look wild and planned at the same time. The house Mindy and Wendi live in is surrounded by big, huge trees that have been there forever.

Back to last night: so Mindy decides to go around front to see if she can see in Ms. Rudy’s house and make sure she’s OK. I follow. That’s when we see it. A big dead tree has simply fallen over. Onto the house! Rudy’s out there, a bit beside herself, but nothing can be done tonight. As far as we can tell, the gutter’s a bit messed up and some shingles will have to be replaced, but that’s it.

Then we went to Fido’s.

What a Friday night!