Whoa. In Which I Realize How Naive I Can Be.

While we were in Austin a couple weeks ago, Midland had a huge hail storm. We didn’t know anything about it and were baffled when we came home and found pieces of white stuff all over the yard and then saw that the siding looked like someone had beaten it with a baseball bat.
They say it was The Worst Hail Storm in Ten Years, for what that’s worth.
So I’m taking a walk a couple of days later, and I’m talking to this guy who lives in the neighborhood, and he’s telling me the hail damaged some of his roses--he has the most beautiful yard on the planet—here’s one of his roses that he gave me when he was showing us how the paint he’s using on his house will match the colors in this rose:

Anyway, I said, “Yeah, it took a bunch of chunks out of our siding.” And he said, “Well, at least you’ll get new siding out of it.”
And I thought, “Huh. Maybe I’d better call the insurance company.” I’d asked The EGE if he thought I should call, and he said he doubted they’d pay for any of it and then they’d raise the payments anyway. So I’d forgotten all about it.
See, I thought insurance is for if your house 1) burns down or 2) gets carried off by a tornado. Because years ago we had a leak in the living room ceiling. Turns out it was the ductwork for the evaporative cooler, but at the time I didn’t know that. I called the insurance company, and the woman told me that if I filed a claim, my premiums would go up. So I’ve never even thought about filing a claim for anything. Ever.
Oh, sure:  we’ve had a couple claims on the vehicles:  when The EGE was parked at the stadium for track and there was a baseball game going on and Cody Joe hit an out-of-the-park homer that went across the stadium parking lot, through the back windshield of The EGE’s truck, and came to rest on the dashboard.
And the time we parked The Wizard in the parking lot at Permian High School in Odessa for a basketball game, and someone who thought we were Permian fans keyed my new car and scratched “MHS” into the paint on the fender.
Other than that, though? Nothing . And nothing ever on the house.
So I called a couple of weeks ago, not expecting much, and the guy said, “Oh, you need a new roof.” And I said, “No. My husband didn’t see anything wrong with the roof. It’s the siding.”
“We’ll set up an appointment to look at the roof.”
“Um, no. It’s just the siding.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll NEED a new roof.”
So I  said, “OK. Come look at the roof.”
And today the insurance inspector guy came out and looked at the roof. He climbed all over the house and measured everything, and he totaled out the roof on the house and porch and carport AND the Fucking Edifice, which, amazingly, has dents, unbeknownst to us. Plus the windows and screens on the west and south, PLUS all the siding except that on the front. Plus the gutter guard on the back of the house—he even wrote that in. Who ever thinks about the gutter guard?
Whoa, indeed.
Now it’s a matter of coughing up the deductible and finding someone to do the work. I’m thinking every decent roofer in town is backed up until fall—everywhere you go, they’re on roofs, working like madmen.
(You can drive around the loop and see tents set up with card tables so people can just drive their vehicles under the tent and have the dents checked out.)
Yowza.
OK, so you’re laughing like a crazy person and slapping your thigh in hilarity at how naive I am. Go ahead. There are just some things I know nothing about.
Filing your own paperwork for probate? Done that.
Buying and selling real estate? No problem.
But wills and homeowner’s insurance? I’m clueless.
Guess it’s time I learned, huh?