When What Goes Wrong, Turns Out to be Quite Right

1.     What is the author’s purpose?
2.     What is the worst thing that happened to me? Defend your answer.
3.     What is something bad that happened to you, that turned out for the best?
Answers are at the end of this post.

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This is what my lake house usually looks like…peaceful…quiet…heaven. But things can change quickly, and they did Saturday, November 18th, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I was at the lake, watching the OSU/Illinois game. The Buckeyes were ahead 38-0 at halftime. The weather in both places was beautiful. Then 3rd quarter hit, and  Columbus weather turned terrible. Driving rain, the kind that soaks you in 2 seconds. YUCK! I was glad to be in warm, sunny Tennessee!
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But two hours later, the front and its pouring rain hit Tennessee. It was too dark to watch the storm, and the TV and internet stopped, started, then died for good. I gave up and went to bed, but before I could fall asleep, I heard a noise. I usually don’t go out in the dark, in a rainstorm, but I peeked out the door. The first 2 pictures show what I saw in the dark. 

Look at that last picture again. You don’t see the chairs because they were to the left of the grill. When I looked in the dark, the deck caught the chairs and a grey strip. That strip belongs to our patio door. It could have blown anywhere, been miles away, and I would never have found it. Thank goodness for a great catch!

After I found the chairs, I started looking for the grill. It’d blown down the steps and landed by the trees. I decided I couldn’t do anything in the dark. Everything could wait till tomorrow. 

Usually things look better in the morning. Not this time! Sunday morning I looked closer and took pictures for my husband. I thought the grill landed upright. Not! It was on its side, gas tank and doors knocked loose, laying off to the side.

​That’s also when I looked up the path that runs beside the house. I discovered what happened to my cable and internet, and I knew that it wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Look below…you’ll see what I saw.

A huge log, I thought, was leaning on my roof. Do you see the other one on the ground? Both of them were dead trees. They were standing behind that thicket of bushes. My husband thought he’d gotten rid of all the dead trees. Not! The storm knocked these two loose. One fell harmlessly to the ground. The other hit the roof and knocked out my internet and TV. Boy, did I miss them!

Do you see the Hughes Net dish? It’s bent in two. The Direct TV dish is bent, but not as badly. I know wind is a  powerful force, but it’s usually powerful somewhere else. This time it hit in my back yard when I was alone, all by myself. Can you imagine yanking those 2 tree trunks out of the ground and tossing them around like sticks? Or the power to bounce a tree around on the roof? I’m glad I didn’t see it.
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This wasn’t a hurricane or tornado, just wind. Amazing! My husband wondered if we had a mini-tornado with the chairs and grill blowing one way, and the tree trunks blowing the other. Tornado, I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything except rain. No wind, no grill hitting the ground, no tree hitting the roof, and I am so glad!

After looking at my pictures, my husband decided to head south and see for himself. We cancelled our Ohio Thanksgiving. No family, no Thanksgiving turkey, no fixings. It sounds like everything went wrong, completely wrong, but it didn’t. It went right, in a completely different, and unexpected way.

Instead we had our first Thanksgiving at the lake. It was simple, grilled chicken and roasted yam slices, and we didn’t over-eat. A very good thing!

We didn’t have a feast to prepare for, or to clean up after. We did the things we love to do. I wrote and enjoyed my lake view. I’m a city girl.
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My husband, country boy and project engineer, enjoyed his yard. He’s been reclaiming it from the woods for over 2 years. See the lake view? When we moved in, you couldn’t see it for all the trees. Remember the two tree trunks? He burned them in the picture above, but he was just getting warmed up, LOL

He scrounged around and found more branches and brush to burn, but they didn’t burn fast enough so he made his own blast furnace. It worked! Can you see the difference between the 2 fires? Wayne channeled his inner Bill Nye science guy/Tim Allen. He made his own blast furnace with the leaf blower. Then he pulled me outside to teach the teacher. He demonstrated how the blower,(red handle) fed in oxygen to feed the fire.
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So when life goes wrong, look around and find what’s right. We did! We enjoyed Thanksgiving at the lake and time together. It’s lovely when all’s well that ends well!

When What Goes Wrong, Turns Out to be Quite Right
1.     What is the author’s purpose?
My author’s purpose was to persuade you that when things go wrong, sometimes it’s for the best. .
2.     What is the worst thing that happened to me? Defend your answer.
Example: The worst thing was no TV. I missed the noise of TV and watching my favorite shows.
 3.     What is something bad that happened to you, that turned out for the best?
Example: When I missed the bus, mom drove me to school and picked up hot chocolate for me. Yum!

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