Everything always happens at once. Time is supposed to keep that from happening, but really, it doesn't, and in such a routine fashion that the joke is more in the telling.
Anyhow. Aerin was getting ready for prom.
Her friend Rozi offered to help with hair and makeup, and following a fine family tradition of out-sourcing what we are bad at, Aerin said yes. So we fetched Rozi because there were Giant Thunderstorms headed our way and we could hear them, and they got to work.
And then the storm hit. And there was a loud crack, like the beginning of thunder. And when I finally finished looking out all the other windows to see what might have happened, I saw the neighbor's tree across our driveway, in the narrow slot between garage and house – it has some branches against the house, and some against the garage, and the top branches lapping at the bottom of the steps to the back porch, and nothing broken as far as I can see.
Everyone is fine. The neighbors are fine. The neighbor on the other side is freaking right out because she is convinced my birch tree will fall on her in exactly the same way, but it didn't this time. Also my tree is healthy, at the moment, and the one that fell clearly had rot going on.
Rozi, calm under fire and Aerin whining, 
finished her project.
The young man showed up resplendent in tux and finished with muddy hiking boots (required to get in and out of his driveway but not part of the final ensemble). So what did we do but photograph them in front of the tree that tipped over, because it makes a great story. That is the picture at the top of the page.
Then with grins on their faces:
and
and the good shoes in their hands, they departed and they won't be home til midnight.
And the tree is still tipped over.
Lee Thomson 