PTSDuh

My poor little blog is hanging in there. I haven't abandoned all hope just yet for it.

Saturday, we had an alarmingly strong storm pass through. It blew down tree limbs and street signs and even a couple of fences. That's all well and good - I mean, we really need the rain here. But I. freaked. out.

The power went out around 8pm, right in the middle of my viewing of Meet the Fockers. Inconvenient, yes - but not as annoying as having the electricity blow in the middle of a theater movie, which is what happened to my friends! They got real rain checks! Anyway, we were a bit put out and all, but it was nice and cool in the house and we figured the lights would be back on momentarily.

9:00...no power. 10:00, nothing. At 11:00 we decided to just go to sleep, but something weird started happening to me. Waves of panic and nausea pounded and crested over my mind and body. I started having flashbacks of the hurricane. I started hyperventilating and then finally determined that I should probably go sleep over at my "sister's" house since she still had power.

Yes, I have post-traumatic stress from Hurricane Ike. It is the weirdest and most awful thing I have ever experienced. If you have anything like this from any trauma in your life, you have my greatest sympathies.

Sometimes...

...the perfect conditions merge together and make miracles - like snow in Houston!

A Good Cause...

Hey, folks - go here and vote to help a good family win replacement technology lost to Ike!

More Ike Humor

Top Ten Reasons Hurricane Season Is Like Christmas

Number Ten:
Decorating the house (with plywood).

Number Nine:
Dragging out boxes that haven't been used since last season.

Number Eight:
Last minute shopping in crowded stores.

Number Seven:
Regular TV shows pre-empted for 'Specials'.

Number Six:
Family coming to stay with you.

Number Five:
Family and friends from out of state calling you.

Number Four:
Buying food you don't normally buy . . . and in large quantities.

Number Three:
Days off from work.

Number Two:
Candles.

And the Number One reason Hurricane Season is like Christmas:

At some point you're probably going to have a tree in your house!

Things Ike Has Taught Me

Not so stealthily stolen from Bubba's Sis:

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Things Ike Has Taught Me

• Coffee and frozen pizzas can be made on a BBQ grill.
  
• Hot pockets taste pretty good deep fried on the outdoor cooker!
  
• My car gets 23.21675 miles per gallon, EXACTLY 
  
• He who has the biggest generator wins.
  
• A new method of non-lethal torture -- showers without hot water.
  
• TV is an addiction and the withdrawal symptoms are painful.
  
• Flood plain drawings on some mortgage documents were seriously wrong.
  
• People will get into a line that has already formed without having any idea what the line is for.
  
• Hampers were not made to contain such a volume.
  
• If I had a store that sold only ice, chainsaws, gas and generators... I'd be rich.
  
• Waterfront property can quickly become someone else's fishing hole.
  
• Tree service companies are underappreciated.
  
• MATH 101: 30 days in month, minus 10 days without power equals 30% higher electric bill??
  
• I can walk a lot farther than I thought.
  
• Heat makes you be brutally honest!!!!
  
• You can never have too many gas cans!
  
• Suddenly you realize you DO have neighbors!
  
• Neighbors are much more sociable when your trees are being removed from their houses.
  
• That neighbor who knows how to use a chainsaw is your new best friend.
  
• What looks acceptable by candlelight in your bathroom will scare you when you look at yourself in the mirror at the office.
  
• Coffee is NOT a luxury - it's a staple! And withdrawal is hell!
  
• Rather than campfires, you find families huddled about tiny battery-operated televisions to watch The Simpsons.
  
• Peanut butter and jelly is a perfectly acceptable meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same day.
  
• Ice is a form of currency.
  
• Coming home from work with a pizza and a charged-up laptop so the kids can watch a DVD makes you a hero.
  
• You run out of things to barbecue after Day 3.
  
• Hair can dry without a blow dryer, but it may not look the way you planned.
  
• Baseball caps go with any post-hurricane ensemble.
  
• You can't train yourself not to flip on light switches when entering a room.
  
• Lukewarm is the new cold.
  
• It's easier to ignore a dirty house when you can't see it.
  
• A new opening phrase when seeing someone: 'Got lights yet?'
  
• Daydreaming consists of thinking about what you will do when the freak'n power comes back on!

Ike, Ike Baby

From the email files:
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Ike Ike Baby

All right stop, evacuate and listen
Ike is here with some big ambition
People, close your homes up tightly
It's blowing like a hurricane daily and nightly
Where will it stop? Yo-I don't know
Turn off the lights and let's go
To the coastline Ike rocks like a vandal
Start up the car and watch me drive like an animal

Dang, hardware store sales boom
Ike's killing my plans like a poisonous mushroom
Deadly, evacuate they tell me
Anyone left will be charged with a felony
Love it or hate it, you better get away
Ike will hit the bull's eye, the storm don't play
If you're on vacation, Yo, Ike stalled it
Check out the eye while the bands revolve it

Hurricane Ike Ike Baby, Hurricane Ike Ike Baby
Hurricane Ike Ike Baby, Hurricane Ike Ike Baby

Now that the people are jumpin'
With their stuff packed up and the gas done pumpin'
Quick to the road, to the road no fakin'
Pass McD's get a burger with bacon
Burnin' 'em and follow the symbol
I go crazy when I hear some imbecile
Revving, in a souped up Pinto
Now I can roll, it's time to crack the window
Rollin' in my Chevy Tahoe
With my window down, I can feel Ike blow
My laptop's on standby, Waiting for some Wi-fi
This spot hot? No - and I gotta fly
Kept on pursuing to the next block
I busted a left and I'm beating the clock
The light was red

Yo -- so I continued to I-37 to San Antonio
Wish I was there in a blink like a jeanie
How I'd love to be sippin' a martini
Jealous 'cause my girl's living fine
She left yesterday and was there by nine
Ready to give my homies a call
My homies acting ill because their car just stalled
Humidity, the air is sticky as h*ll
Ike's on his way, the weatherman yells
Moving toward the gulf coast real fast
I'm in my car, can't give it no gas
Bumper to bumper the interstate's packed
I'm trying to get away before Ike attacks
Police on the scene, what can it mean?
They hooked me up, now there's another lane free
If you're on vacation, Yo, Ike stalled it
Check out the eye while the bands revolve it

Hurricane Ike Ike Baby, Hurricane Ike Ike Baby
Hurricane Ike Ike Baby, Hurricane Ike Ike Baby

Yo man, let's get out of here! Word to your mother!

Post-Mortem

For some pictures of our area, check out Bubba's Sis. Her pics are almost identical to those I would have posted. Here's part of my "processing" of Hurricane Ike:

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It’s Wednesday. No, Tuesday. The days have started to run together. I forgot my good friend’s birthday yesterday. I called her today and she didn’t seem to hold it against me. My world is topsy-turvy after a hurricane named Ike.

We had been “keeping an eye” on it (pardon the pun) as it made its way over Haiti, Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. Having been through Hurricane Alicia in 1983, which had been a higher rated storm, we were not that concerned about a stupid category two. But we sighed, rolled up our shirtsleeves and followed proper etiquette – boarding up what windows we could, making pretty little “X”s with masking tape on the windows we couldn’t. We filled both tubs with water in case we lost water pressure. We bought a 700 watt inverter to power a fan or TV. We stocked up on “non perishables” (read: beans in a can), ice and bottled water. Then we “hunkered down” and waited.

Ike started to breeze in on Friday afternoon. The wind picked up and we had some gnarly gusts – some up to 30 mph. Our good friends who were going to ride out the storm with us came over and we decided to go ahead and cook dinner around 6pm. Halfway through preparing pork chops and veggies, the power flickered a few times and then finally died. I was quite disappointed, as the weather hadn’t gotten angry quite yet. I called around to some friends who lived in the area and they all had power. Yay, us.

As the sun set, the eeriness of not having electricity really set in. We had to tote flashlights with us everywhere, and no matter how many times we instinctively flipped the light switches, nothing happened. Fortunately, we still had gas and water service, so we could use the toilet and shower as much as we needed. We hooked up our inverter to power a small television/DVD player for the kids and a fan for us. Our neighbors were kind enough to lend us a battery powered TV, so we felt some connection with the outside world. Being in a house with boarded up windows and no electricity feels more like a prison than a home.

As we watched the news people on TV getting blown around by gusts of 50 mph, we tried to stay optimistic. We tried to convince ourselves that we had made the right choice to stay and not evacuate. Around 10pm, we all decided we had heard enough and we all took our respective sleeping pills and went to bed.

My cell phone rang, dragging me out of a dead sleep at 4am. It was my concerned father, asking how we were doing since we were now “in the worst of it.” As I tripped into consciousness and took my earplugs out, my heart was gripped with fear as I heard what Hurricane Ike had to say to us. There’s just no real way to describe what 80+ mph winds and torrential rain sounds like. It was like a giant monster roaring continuously, or maybe the Titanic bearing down on the house. That sound is etched in my mind, and I never want to hear it again!

I went upstairs to check on the children and was even more amazed at the sound I heard up there. It was if a ghost train was speeding by just outside the window, passengers throwing uncooked pasta at the glass. Surprisingly, the girls were sound asleep. Thank God, I thought as I wasn’t sure I could appear brave in front of them. I would be useless for comfort. I went back downstairs to find my husband placing a pan on the bedroom floor to catch the water dripping down from a poorly installed vent. The rain was coming down virtually horizontally, sending it in torrents into our attic. It was too dark to see the maelstrom outside and I was able to put my earplugs back in and go back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, I woke to see some light coming in through the blinds. Dawn had broken along with our back fence, palm tree and some of our spirits. After making sure everyone was accounted for and well, we inspected the house and grounds. Our insurance man is definitely going to get a call as soon as we get phone service, I thought, looking through the back yard to the street behind our absent fence and the apartment complex beyond that. Their car ports had been made of corrugated aluminum and had been peeled back like sardine cans. One next door neighbor had lost their back fence as well, while the other neighbor’s fence looked like nothing had happened. 

We spent the morning doing the only thing we could: sit and wait. We had to use the inverter sparingly as we were draining our car batteries and had to jump start them several times. Around noon, the weather let up and my husband got to work on a temporary fix for the fence. My friend and I got in her car to go check on another pal’s house (she had evacuated wisely to Austin) and emotion ambushed me. Looking around at everyone’s downed fences, trees and roofs, I just couldn’t pretend to be brave anymore. My friend sympathized with me as I wept, and she pointed out that even though we had been one of the lucky ones, this still was quite a trauma. You’d think with my “million-dollar education,” I would have figured that out on my own.

Update

Well, it's Friday and we are now 100% "normal" with our Internet returning this afternoon. We are oh so grateful for this! I know so many people are still without power and hot meals, let alone clean, running water and Internet.

For those of you who have texted me, please call or email. I am over my limit for text messages and am not going to respond via that method anymore.

We are going away this weekend to the Washington County Fair. We are tired of cleaning and sitting around, so this seemed like a nice way to get in a mini-vacation before work and school starts up again (most likely, anyway) on Monday.

We still have houseguests, as Punkin's BFF and her mom don't have power at their house. I know they are itching to get back to more familiar territory. Being displaced, even if you have comfy accomodations, is not fun.

I am so, so thankful for my spoiled rotten life. I really am!

Update

After a couple of days of no power, the heat and boredom were getting to us in a big way, so we went against the mayor's pleas to stay put and evacuated to my in-laws' house in Brenham. It amazes me how much I take power for granted. The kiddoes were driving us nuts and it was pretty much impossible to sleep.

Now I am comfy in the a/c, watching whatever I want on TV and eating food that did not come out of a can. We are planning to stay here until the power is back on.

As far as damage, we lost a majority of our back fence, which Shane got temporarily repaired yesterday. We got a little water in our master bedroom from a poorly designed vent on the roof. Overall, we got very lucky.

If you went through Ike and are reading this, let me know how you are! Cell phone service is so spotty that we can't get through to a bunch of folks.

Update

The winds are really picking up now and the power is blinking on and off. According to the news, we're starting to get 50+ mph wind gusts. All is well with us, though. It's just a challenge to find stuff to do with no power. The kids are going bonkers.

We're trying to cook a pork chop dinner, alternating kitchen lights and flashlights. Perhaps we're trying to hold onto some sense of normalcy in this chaos.

Until later...

Update

It looks like the folks who have houses on Galveston Island are already S.O.L. The storm hasn't even gotten here yet and many of the houses and restaurants on the shore are just about under water. The tide is really coming in!

Here, the wind has picked up a little, but it still looks like your average sunny day in September. It's hard to believe that in less than 12 hours we're going to be experiencing 50+ mph winds! We've got boards up on the windows that face the north and west where the big gusts are expected to come from. One thing about having a two story house is that it is too dangerous to get up to some of the second floor windows. We'll just pray for the best there. It feels like a prison in the rooms with boarded windows.

Our neighborhood is filled with the noises of saws and hammers as people finish up their windows. I am not surprised at how many people are staying after that mess with Hurricane Rita a couple of years ago. I think one of the reasons that the highways didn't get insane is that a  lot of people who left during Rita are staying this time.

There are still some folks out trying to find gas and sundries, but good luck with that! Most of the gas stations around here were out of gas yesterday. Shane had to buy premium to top off his tank. From what I've heard, most or all of the stores are boarded up and closed today.

We will probably have some friends come over later today to try to make things less scary for the kids. We'll make it one big slumber party. With 100 mph winds, 10" of rain and maybe a tornado. It'll be the party of the year! 

Ike and the Hummingbird

So, it looks like Hurricane Ike is coming to visit. We are going to board up and "hunker down." I was feeling pretty apprehensive about it until I went out into the garage and saw a lone hummingbird flitting around. I got a broom and the bird landed on the bristles, which allowed me to take it outside - then it flew away.

Last year, I had an intuitive tell me that the hummingbird is my symbol for peace and prosperity. I will look at this as a good sign! I'll try to keep you posted as events unfold, as long as we have power.