Ike - Day 6

The good stuff:
Nice weather. McDonald’s open. More stations with gas. Stores open longer hours. Dairy and other perishables starting to reappear in small quantities. Curfews with shorter hours. People helping each other. Meeting friends and being happy they are safe. Seeing our local officials do a great job. No one is perfect but they are trying so hard and you know they are spending time away from their homes and families to take care of others. POD’s and COW’s. The absolute and total coverage being given by the local news and radio stations. Stores like HEB and Kroger that are being so generous. The mood is good around here but I think the glorious weather has a lot to do with it. Extended deadlines for dog shows and other things.

The not so good stuff:
Being ashamed to admit you have power when there are still a million and a half without. Everyone complaining about the smell of mildew and all the bugs in their homes. The amount of destruction seen by driving around the neighborhood. Your insurance company telling you there is a $6,000 deductible for wind damage. Not knowing when everything will be back to “normal.” The fact that we get a bare mention on national news and it hasn’t even been a week. The scary thought that there is still 2 ½ months of hurricane season left.

I finally started writing again although did move the refrigerator, clean the kitchen, do more laundry and go shopping as well! I’m taking four online classes and have fallen behind on homework so must decide which I can catch up on and which to lurk and read later.

It is still hard to get a data connection unless late at night. As more people are coming back from their evacuation the cell service is bad during the day. Also I think a lot of the towers are simply running out of juice.

It was amazing to walk into Wal-Mart. All their dairy / produce etc. shelves are empty. I got pictures. Kroger’s has a little cheese, a little meat, a few eggs, etc. Not much but some.

Downtown Houston is still a mess. Yay Shell for only requiring essential employees to report to work until Monday. I thought I was going to have to burn some vacation time. They are good to their people.

I have fifteen pages on my hurricane story which is going to involve arrests and curfews and mandatory evacuations and government officials and all sorts of neat stuff. Oh yeah, and a little romance too. I must remember the POD’s and COW’s!

Ike-us Interrupt-us

I typed this yesterday but then couldn't get a good enough datacard connection to get online!
************

Several years ago, my husband asked if I would like to go catping. My response: “Not sure. How big is the RV?”

So “roughing it” after Ike is tedious, to say the least. It is now Sunday, September 14 and almost 9 pm. I’ve been surviving the lack of power and lack of water and lack of everything else with the comfort of my laptop and cell phone. My mini-van is nicely equipped with a power outlet so we pull out into the driveway a couple of hours a day, run the engine, enjoy the a/c, and watch TV. I also plug in my laptop and data card and share “air” time with my daughter. For any Apollo 13 fans it is our Lunar Module.

Not today. Cell service has got weaker and weaker and I now can’t connect. I thought I’d make some notes for when that changes.

I think Centerpoint restored power to a whopping hundred thousand people over the last twelve hours. Only 1.9 million to go! Of course, a couple of major transmission lines are down and many rows of light poles are tilted at alarming angles. Trucks are running around all over the place and the “up” folks are creeping in closer. I think they are doing the best they can but we are never satisfied! The temperatures have dropped and supposedly the humidity will go down tomorrow which will help out. The house is smelly so we tore up the areas of wet carpet in the four rooms affected. The hole in the roof is at the very top and even the man-lift we rented to put up plywood (and couldn’t return because the store closed early) couldn’t reach it. The rain is supposed to be over but we still have a couple of buckets in the front hallway.

Today we drove forty or so miles to Rosenberg. We’d been told we could find gas, water, and ice there. We found gas in Needville (or about halfway) and the lines were manageable. A huge stream of traffic came the other way, RV’s and livestock trailers with people coming home.
Things in Rosenberg were civilized. There were a couple of restaurants open and McDonald’s boasted a “hurricane” menu of burgers and nuggets. We even found cash on our fourth ATM stop, we still had plenty but wanted to stockpile. Bottled water was fairly plentiful and we got about fifty gallons.

The area we traveled was littered with twisted metal, downed signs and traffic lights, and tarp-covered roofs. Power was non-existent for the first fifteen miles, then spotty, then mostly on. People pulled into powerless but open gas stations and just hung around and chatted. Humanity is so social!

Of course, everyone is complaining. Where is the ice and the water and the MRE’s and the gas? Well – I’m sure it will be here. Less than two days has passed since the worst of the hurricane left our area and help could congregate. I don’t think anyone anticipated so many people being without power.

I’m so tired of living “rough” but it only shows how spoiled I am. I applaud the stores that are opening so we can go in and buy baby wipes, chips, peanuts, and warm cans of soda. The folks behind the counter are working via calculator and it is cash-only, but they were a welcome sight and we didn’t encounter any gouging. We got a lot of batteries, flashlights, water, food, and candles before this started. Not enough. Especially not enough water because our 4-H chicks go through six or seven gallons a day. Having run out of usable rainwater they are now on bottled so I hope they appreciate it! We learned a lot when we evacuated for Rita but that missed our house. So many things we will do differently next time there is a chance we may lose power.

Seems like the various agencies are finding out the things they could do better too.

I am thankful that I thought to do every scrap of laundry on Friday although spotted a couple of packed but open laundromats in Rosenberg.

Grateful we have nothing we can’t recover from.

Not looking forward to another dark night.

Greatly anticipating the time when we get power or find a motel room and I can shower again!

Let there be light. Please

So we made it through the storm without killing each other. It was close, people got a little cranky. Stress? Nothing like the wind screaming while the candles flicker and water drips through the ceiling and under the refrigerator. Make that pours. We mopped up five gallons that was somehow coming in through the side of the house. At least we had something to flush the toilets with! But it was scary. You'd hear things rattling against the side of the house and not know what would hit hard enough to break through. Then you'd think the wall or roof was about to peel away.

Anyway - did you know you can get blisters from wringing out towels? Try doing it for two hours. At least it was cool on the kitchen floor sitting in a puddle of water. And it took my mind of that claustrophobic feeling... Or perhaps it was the bottle of wine. One or the other.

Power went out early, 9 pm. Out of 2.2 million Centerpoint customers, 2.1 million are without power. All together it is 22 percent of the ENTIRE state of Texas. That's a lot of folks, y'all. Up to a month to bring it all back. Hopefully ours will only be a few days as we aren't in the flooded area and this is the only time I'm happy we don't have a lot of trees. For us no power = no water.

Then the eye passed and the wind changed and the water came in through the study instead. Carpet in there is soaked. Oh well. After seeing the rest of the damage we got off lightly. Our barn is short a roof and a couple of walls, but the livestock survived (haven't seen all the chickens yet but haven't really looked). And thirty percent of my shingles are scattered on the floor but nothing that can't be fixed.

I'm sitting in my van, parked in the driveway, with dh and daughter watching TV in the back. I have a full tank of gas, a/c, and a power outlet. We may camp out here tonight! I said it was our Lunar Module a la Apollo 13.

Inside it is dark. We took down a few strips of plywood but the sun is down. I still walk into rooms and forget I'll be blind.

In-laws left and son went to stay with a friend as he has to work and really needs a shower. (We all do but still.) So it is just the three of us and a mountain of animals. But we have flashlights and a few candles, water and iPods. Tomorrow I think stores thirty or forty minutes away will be open and hopefully trucks with ice and water will arrive.

And who knows what the next few days will bring. If there's anything else brewing in the tropic please don't tell me...

Okay - daughter is whining for the data card.

Take care everyone!

Waiting for [I don't like] IKE

Well it was coming here. Then it wasn’t. Now it is again.

*rolls eyes, big sigh*

A huge cloud of complacency covered southeast Texas yesterday (Tuesday). On Monday everyone was on high alert then they said “never mind, it’s going to Brownsville.” Red flagswere lowered and evacuations held off until the last minute.

But THEN the forecast changed. Instead of the well-planned evac by zip code it is: “Brazoria County, y’all get out now.”

Not that everyone’s leaving yet. There were fifteen pickups in the plywood line at Home Depot, (I'm glad we already had ours) and fifteen people in the prescription pickup line at Walgreen’s! Wal-Mart was surprisingly empty but I think a lot of people had supplies left from the Gustav episode last week. Or they were still at Home Depot.

Galveston County has been advised to shelter in place. I hope they all have a second story. Supposed to be a huge storm surge with this thing, and Jim Cantore is hanging out there. It's always bad when he shows up!

Well – I’m not going. I’d leave the livestock - sorry all you animal lovers but none of mine qualify as “high dollar,” which is really all they want you to take. What I have is too many dogs. I could stick them all in the van and drive, hoping to stay out of traffic, hoping to find somewhere to go. Made that mistake with Rita and don’t want to do it again.

I’m thirty miles, plus or minus, from the coast. The plywood’s going up as I type, and we have forty-eight hours to pray for the thing to do a Rita and go north sooner than expected. Or it can go west. Or east. I’d love it to go east. Anywhere not as densely populated.

Meanwhile I’m going to stay home, do laundry, and continue to stock up.

Watching, wondering, waiting.