Well, that was fun! We had a rather torrential downpour here in the clavicle of Texas last weekend, which had me worried as I knew we’d lost a shingle off the front of the roof (we were in the process of looking for a good roofing company in the area).

As it turned out the single shingle loss didn’t result in a leak. The three shingles that apparently slid off the back of the roof, however, were another matter. This meter-long gap was right over the back of Ramón’s office, leading him to call me in on Tuesday morning and worriedly show me the rather impressive water stain on the vaulted ceiling. We went outside and marveled at the gaping hole in our rear shingles (read: “When the fuck did THAT happen???”), then I got stuck into expediting the roofing company search. After perusing the BBB website and other consumer report sites we settled on a company and they came out yesterday evening to take a look at the roof.

Yesterday morning, however, a rather nasty storm system was headed straight for our city. You should have seen me hovering over the laptop screen, watching the incremental approach of the storm on Weather Underground and chanting, “Go north, go, north, go NORTH” under my breath. The storm listened, thank Cthulhu, and wound up literally skimming the north side of our neighborhood. We got a few heavy raindrops, but that was it.

So the roofing guys came out, made friends with our Welcome Wagon cat Jemma, climbed on top of the roof for their inspection, and declared that yes, we did have wind and hail damage as well as shingle loss and some additional things that needed to be fixed, but they could handle it all easily in one day. They also asked if I wanted them to cover the holes temporarily, since there was more rain in the forecast today.

Yes, please, I said.

So they did, gave me a copy of their bonafides, and told me to call the insurance company and arrange for an inspector to come out and check out the damaged spots with them, after which they’d arrange for payment and fix the roof. I called said insurance company this morning and had a chat with a very nice woman who was sympathetic about the situation and said that it sounded like it was covered by our policy (21-year-old roof that may well be original to the house, no prior claims, hell yes it’s covered) minus the wind and hail damage deductible. Said deductible is reasonable and we have it in savings, so no grousing there. She generated a claim number for us and said the inspector would call us by end of day Monday to arrange an inspection with us and Chris, the owner of the roofing company.

So that’s that and I’m very pleased that 1) I adulted successfully, and 2) the gaping hole over Ramón’s office will not be leaking in case it rains. And once this has been resolved, it’s time to call the HVAC company and get them to come replace our 21-year-old furnace before it completely packs in (since it runs the fan that powers the A/C, this is not something we can leave until fall). It’ll be nice not to worry about the roof for a few years or the A/C going tits up during the summer. But man, I’m gonna have to write a buttload of sexy fiction to replenish our savings, not to mention paying for the foundation repair we need next year.