The Ike Experience September 19, 2008
Hurricane Ike came through town overnight Friday as expected. The storm itself was pretty scary, but the aftermath is something else.
We lost power around midnight Friday night and just now got it back this morning, a mere 6.5 days later. There are so many other people still waiting, though. Houston’s heat without A/C is not fun. It took me over 4 hours to get Adam to sleep on Saturday night, because he was so darn hot. Thankfully we had a cool front come through which made things bearable.
We were pretty cut off from the world at first. It was Wednesday before we had a working home phone and cell phones. Obviously email was out of the question even from Dan’s blackberry. It’s weird not to be able to communicate with people.
We were lucky not to suffer any major damage. I know the same can’t be said for many people. There are trees down everywhere, and the flooding was bad even up here. Those poor coastal cities were just devastated. It’s so sad to see so many people lose everything.
The first gas stations in our area opened on Tuesday, although you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near those long lines if you didn’t have to. We have grocery stores open now, too, which eases one of my main concerns. It’s not easy to be on such a restrictive diet when you’re dealing with these kind of issues. I can’t eat a can of ravioli for dinner like most people, so it eases my mind tremendously to know that we have both power and a way to get groceries.
As miserable as we were for a while there, I feel fortunate to have come through this thing ok. The experience is making me appreciate the things we take for granted every day: air conditioning, refrigerators, dishwashers, washers & dryers, microwaves, baby monitors, TVs, computers, and the all important internets! I’m very relieved to have all of the above back at my disposal now.
My thoughts are with all of the people who lost loved ones or who will have to rebuild their lives from scratch. What we experienced were inconveniences. Those people are truly suffering.
Just My Luck September 12, 2008
Quite a bit has happened since my last post.
My grandfather passed away. Adam injured his leg requiring a seven hour jaunt first to the pediatrician and then to the ER. He ended up spending a week in a splint but thankfully is ok now. Then he had a bad reaction to a new food and went on a food strike that we’re still trying to recover from.
It seems to be one thing after another, and now it’s Hurricane Ike. It’s headed right for us here in Houston. We live on the north side of town and were not told to evacuate. We were told to shelter in place so that the people living in areas that will be affected by the storm surge could get out. It’s pretty much impossible to evacuate all of Houston at once.
So, we made preparations and are hunkering down at home. The eye is supposed to go right over our area, and we’re expecting 85mph sustained winds with gusts to 100mph in our neighborhood. The worst will come overnight. We’ll undoubtedly lose power, so I who knows when I’ll be back on the computer after tonight.
I’m nervous, but hopefully we’ll be ok. I hope the city officials knew what they were talking about when they told us to stay put. I think the worst will come as a result of storm surge, and we’re not at risk of that here. The coastal areas are going to get it very badly, though.
So, that’s the latest here. It’s pretty sad when it takes a hurricane to break my blog silence, but we’ve been in a rough patch lately. Hopefully Ike won’t add too much to that.