Glad Ike took a hike!

I'm exhausted from the preparations for Hurricane Ike! My husband and I are just planners by nature...if you were stranded on the proverbial desert island, you'd probably be pretty happy to have us be there with you! I've been up since about 4:30 making lists, running errands, helping neighbors, watching the Tropical Update on the Weather Channel. I'll just bet they have cancelled all vacations until further notice at the Weather Channel these days! In some ways, I am glad that I pretty much know what to expect from a hurricane. In 2004, we had Jeanne and Frances each make landfall in my town, within weeks of each other. The next year we had a direct hit from Wilma. I have a whole hurricane commemorative T shirt collection from that year, my favorite being a swirling white hurricane aerial shot, with the smiling head of Wilma Flintstone superimposed on it.

So, there are stages we go through - the Before the storm, the During the storm, and the After the storm. They are all different, but equally intense.

Before the storm, you get cash, fill your gas tank, refill your prescriptions, charge all of your batteries, take pictures to document the "before", check your supplies - lanterns, candles, radios, batteries, a land line hurricane phone, TV with rabbit ears, lighters, heavy duty extension cords. Chainsaw blades and oil, trash bags, bleach, gloves, Ben Gay, Advil, groceries, beer, plastic sheeting, bug spray, water, pet food and crates, Gatorade. You move things around in the garage so the generator is near the door, and you make sure it starts up. You take down and put away umbrellas and throw the patio furniture into the pool. You trim all the coconuts off the palm trees, so they don't go airborn and turn into missiles. You dodge wasps and bees and put down your shutters and help with the shutters of all of your neighbors. You make up your guest rooms and gather extra pillows and blankets, because you will probably have some company. During Francis, our neighbor Dana's roof blew off, and she had to run to our house with her boyfriend and her dog during the peak of the storm, dodging flying shingles the whole way. You prepare a safe room, your interior room with no windows. You clean your house and make sure all of your laundry is done, because after the storm, everything will be dark and humid and wet and dirty, probably for weeks.


Then you hunker down and wait. We usually like to cook a big dinner, a last supper, if you will, because we know that we won't have electricity for up to 2 weeks after a big storm, and we usually have a lot of people to feed. This being Florida, we have a lot of elderly neighbors, who are single and live alone. We usually invite them to come to stay with us during the storm itself. It is a little easier if the storm hits during daylight hours. You can usually find a safe-ish perch to watch the storm go by from the side of the house that is protected from the first part of the storm. From this vantage point you can watch things sail by and crash into your house. It is so much nicer to be able to see what it is that is crashing, than to lie there in the dark and hear thud after thud, not knowing. Then the eye passes over, all is quiet, and you venture timidly outside to see what wrath has been visited on you. Then you go back inside and it starts all over again, the storm coming from the other side now, and the storms are usually much stronger on the back side. We try to watch a movie, play scrabble or gin, anything to distract us. My husband is usually racing around with a flashlight, checking to see what is leaking, what is breathing, what looks like it is not going to hold, checking in with friends on his cell phone. All of our doors are braced from the inside with 2x4's. During one storm, we had a ladder braced against the interior wall of our living room, to support the wall. (our house was built at the turn of the century) The wall breathed in and out so much the top of the ladder ate it's way about 2 inches into the plaster!


After the storm, we start to clean up as soon as we can. We live on 2 acres, and my husband's hobby is gardening. It is all highly landscaped, and when the top canopy gets broken off, it kills all of the hedges and under plantings. After Jeanne and Francis, we hauled 3 tractor trailer loads of debris out, including about 100 trees. When the trees went over, the giant root balls pulled up all of the stones in our driveway when they heaved over. Michael took up every stone, one at a time and built a stone wall, cut out the roots, then re-paved the driveway. We have replanted hundreds of more trees since then, and things have grown in nicely. After those storms, we were so fortunate to have help from near and far. Friends and even some people we had never met before packed up chain saws, ice, even a spare generator, and came to help. We were and are so blessed to have such wonderful friends!


Well, we are pretty relieved that Ike went away. Not to wish a hurricaine on anyone else! As you can tell, they are NOT FUN. At 10 minutes to every hour, you can still find us in front of the TV, watching the Tropical Update. We pretty much stopped at the Before the Storm phase, as the storm did not continue on track to hit us. But, as you can see, we take it seriously and get about as ready as we can be. Brandon is still on call for deployment by FEMA for the tactical rescue team. He is a firefighter/paramedic for Miami Dade. So far, has not been called out this year. We worry about him, he was deployed for Katrina. He is just the kind of person you would like to have there to help you though, strong, kind, and smart. We are proud of him!