Apparently the apocalypse is headed for the East Coast.
Last Tuesday there was an earthquake in Virginia that Philadelphia could feel. This weekend, we got hit by Hurricane Irene.
What did we do to piss off Mother Nature?
I was concerned about three things during this hurricane: A. loosing electricity B. the winds knocking down this huge tree in front of our a house and C. Our basement is prone to flooding and we had A LOT of boxes on the floor that have been there since we moved in. Clearly these boxes were so important to us that we hadn't touched them in four months, but regardless, they needed to be saved.
On Saturday morning (the day the storm was slated to hit us), JEGs ran to Lowes and bought wood to build shelving.
While everyone we knew was hunkering down in their houses with a movie and some alcohol, my husband was building the shelving on our front porch in the wind and the rain. I have to admit, he did a good job.
We had planned to organize and make it look nice, but it took him till nearly 10 pm to finish. We quickly Jenga'd the boxes on the shelves and I am glad we did. About a half hour later we checked on the basement to find this:
After a quick shower, we sat on the couch and started flipping between the news channels to get the latest updates. Anyone in the Philadelphia area catch Adam Joseph on ABC? Poor guy looked like he was about to have a meltdown. He started the broadcast out with a full suit on. Quickly the jacket came off. Then the tie was loosened and the sleeves were rolled up. Finally the tie came off. JEGs and I kept flipping back to see if he would be completely naked at any point. Chill out dude. You are broadcasting the weather, not creating it.
Around 11:00 they started talking about tornadoes for Norristown. Not our county, but our specific town.
Fun Lizzie Fact: I am terrified of tornadoes. I have never lived through one and I am scared to death of them. When they started broadcasting tornado warnings I put on shoes, grabbed a cat carrier and sat next to Winston ready to grab him at the first siren. I'm not even kidding, I was shaking. To make matters worse, they kept popping up over and over again. Seriously with this crap? Are they trying to make me go into labor?
JEGs did a quick interwebs search and found streaming audio of our local police and fire radio to see if there was any mention of tornadoes. We decided that with the threat of the twisters (and the potential crashing of the tree into our master bedroom) it might be safer to sleep in the living room. JEGs blew up the air mattress and by midnight I passed out from sheer exhaustion.
God bless JEGs; that man stayed up till nearly 4 am keeping an eye on the tornado warnings, sump pump and electricity. He tried to snuggle next to me on the air mattress, but being as pregnant as I am, it wasn't comfortable so he relocated to the couch.
The next morning I woke up to electricity, the tree still standing, and minimal water in the basement. We celebrated with a breakfast of blueberry pancakes.
Our general area really made out ok. There were a few branches in the streets, but no serious flooding. We were really blessed.
We have officially made it through two natural disasters in our home. What's next? Locusts? I hope not, because the cicadas in our neighborhood are annoying enough.
Always & Forever,
ME
5 comments:
"You are broadcasting the weather, not creating it." I laughed for five minutes. Seriously. Laughed. I'm using this quote and pretending it was my own.
I'm glad you folks were okay. And what a good guy to build you those shelves. You'll always remember when you made them. ;)
I have to say...its amazing what gets done around the house when under the gun. Baby on the way = half a dozen projects finished that weren't on the books until a couple years down the road. Ive been wanting to build shelves down there...but the hurricane bearing down on us really got that ball rolling.
We really did make out good. Not losing electricity was key. Otherwise I would have been manually bailing water for hours.
I do think that Im putting a ban on watching the news during any other natural disasters or major events. They are such a bunch of dramatic nancies!
JEGs
Hey JEGs, those shelves are amazing! Way to go. If you can build anything like that in such a fraught situation, you will a star daddy!
LB, I too hate storms. Weird thing is, it's the thunder that terrifies me, even though it's the only thing that can't actually hurt you. At least you're scared of something actually dangerous! hehe
Meanwhile over here at the Casa's de Manning the elders, we were without power for 43 hours (9:30pm Saturday - 4:30pm Monday).
Trying keeping a 5 year old and a 3 year old occupied for that long without electricity. On the positive side, I haven't had that much sleep in a long time ;~}
Duuuude, how scary was that business? And I now HATE the local news. As soon as they started mentioning the word tornado every 5 seconds in towns that were getting closer and closer to ours, my anxiety level was going up. I think we must have been brain twins at that point, you slept in the living room, I woke a sleeping baby then made him sleep with me in a house with no power and A/C. Ugggh, I am DONE with mother freaking nature. DONE.
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