We're OK

We actually spent the night awake from the storm. Who could sleep during a hurricane?!? We lost our cable about 9:30 pm and lost power briefly at 1:30 am. It came on during the height of the storm (about 3:00), then went back off again. It came on briefly one more time, and went back off for good around 5 am. During all of this back and forth and hearing it on the radio, we found out that the eye was traveling east of where we were, therefore, we weren't going to get the eye at all, and we got solid wind and rain during the whole time.

It was a pretty crazy night. We moved to Corinne's room and I laid down on a mattress on her floor while she was on her bed. She had the windows open, and it scared me to see the storm. She wanted to see the storm because she wanted to see if she something was going to hit the house. I would rather not know. Anyway, we eventually fell asleep when the height of the storm died down. I then went to my bed and slept a few hours.

Mid morning, we had another storm, a rain shower. After that, the skies cleared, and we ventured out. Our neighbors had the same idea. Corinne went to the backyard and saw that a tree fell over, and part of a tree fell on the back fence. Our next door neighbor didn't tie down his boat, so his boat slammed up against our side fence and knocked out a couple of panels. Other than that, we didn't have any other damage (including roof damage, yea!).

We, along with our neighbors, started picking up storm debris. We couldn't handle the big branches that fell in the backyard because we don't have the right tools, but we did pick up the twigs and branches that fell in the front yard. Like everyone else, we moved our storm debris to the curb and wondered when they would pick it up.

Then began the wait. Wait for lights to come back on. Wait for grocery stores to have food in them again. Wait for gas stations to have gas. Wait.

We started sitting outside on our porch and was greatly entertained by the neighborhood kids. It's amazing how many games kids can come up with. We just sat outside and watched the kids. It reminded me of when I was Corinne's age how we used to sit outside with my parents at night. We didn't have a/c, and I was about Corinne's age when Alicia hit. We waited for about two weeks before our power came back on. During that time, we would go outside and cool off on the porch, talking in the dark. I consider it a very sweet time, because I got to spend time with my family, just talking.

Today the weather was humid, but not as hot as it could be. The storm this morning was kind of cooling with the winds, but the winds soon died down, and it started feeling hot. We opened the windows to try to get some air circulation through the house. Some of our windows don't have screens, so we have to be careful to make sure the cats don't go outside.

Speaking of cats, our new kitten, Samy, developed Kennel Cough. That's a common upper respiratory illness that occurs to shelter animals right after you bring them home. He started sneezing and had watery eyes during the storm. He also felt like he was running a fever. Since we have a hurricane going on, I couldn't just take him to the vet, so we watched him to make sure he was OK. But it doesn't help when he looks at you and sneezes right in your face. Can you teach a cat to cover up when sneezing?

Today I also looked at our refrigerator situation. I decided for the time being we would leave the food there until we have to move it. I also decided to start cooking the perishables. Since we didn't loose water or gas, we were able to cook on our gas stove and take hot showers with our gas water heater. Thank God!