Alternatively titled: Wherein a large portion of my house was threatens to fall down and now I need a drink.

How’s your Friday going?

Here in Crazy Town, MI we have a wind advisory for sustained winds of 30 MPH and wind gusts of 45-50 MPH. I decided to work from home today for reasons completely unrelated to the wind or sanity– I suspect smart thing to do in 50MPH winds is probably not to hole up in a 80 year old, structurally un-sound garage. So just to cover all of my bases earlier today I sent MysteryMan a message letting him know that just in case came home to a big pile of rubble with the cat and I located at the bottom of it, he should know that 1.) We love him, and 2.) Sorry about the mouse head.

And I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to look out the garage windows and stare at the front porch for a while after that, but thank god I did, because after 3 minutes of staring I realized that I wasn’t seeing an optical illusion and one of the temporary porch supports was, in fact, blowing in the wind.

I tried to give it a half-ass push back onto the foundation– to no avail– and then indulged in 15 seconds of panic since MysteryMan was unavailable to come help with this little problem.

And then I was like, um hello? Have I not accomplished much harder things that lifting the porch roof 1/8″ up so I can get the support back in place? Okay, actually, maybe not. So I stood back, put my hands on my hips, and said, What Would Mystery Man Do?

I’ve seen this dude in action enough times to know there are two possible ways he would tackle a problem like this:

1. Brute force.
2. Brute applied via hammer.

So, I planted my feet and tried to lift the support back up into place using nothing but my legs and a prayer…I’m not sure that I’ve ever exerted that much upward force on an object ever in my life. I think I felt blood vessels in my eyeballs start to pop. And, the damn thing didn’t move even a little.

Then I decided to try using my brain a little. And a hammer.

I put this board in place and hit the bottom of it with a hammer until it had raised the support the necessary amount. (I probably hit the board over 150 times with all my strength to get it there.)

Then more hammering to get it on to the foundation.

Good news: The house did not fall down.

Bad news: I’m not nearly as good at this shit as this guy…

But I get by.

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