The Glorious Mundane

We are back from San Antonio – in our home, which has electricity, water, and all the other comforts of home. It is glorious. I cannot say that enough. It is just awesome. I will never again take it for granted.

The hurricane was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever been through. I’ve been through hurricanes before, but Ike’s power and longevity was unbelievable.

On Friday (Sept 12), there was no school because of the impending storm. It was oppressively hot that day – you could hardly breathe. Apparently this is very common before a hurricane. That night, we went to bed around 10:30 pm, fully prepared for the storm, and having watched TV all day, we knew Ike’s arrival was imminent. He arrived as planned during the night, and I remember waking up, thinking the bedroom windows were going to crack because the noise outside was so loud. I eventually went back to sleep, until about 6:20 am when our power went out. Funny how quiet the house gets when that happens. I immediately got out of bed, and went into the kitchen to take stuff out of the frig and put it in the cooler. Once that was done, I turned on the radio, to find out that the eye of the storm was headed right up the freeway (we live right off the interstate a few miles) and it had not yet reached us.

After I took care of our refrigerated stuff, I sent a few text messages from my cell phone, then went back to bed. A few hours later, the eye of the storm had passed us, but we were warned that tornados could still touch down, and the winds would be even stronger on the other side of the storm. We waited all day as it rained and rained. I quickly lost cell coverage and was soon no longer able to email anyone from my blackberry. The girls and I played board games while Gary napped (he had been up much of the night). It was starting to get hot in the house. Finally, around 5 pm, we noticed the storm had stopped for good and we ventured out into our yard to survey the damage.

We had a lot of small branches down in the yard, but nothing major. It was amazing to us that none of the trees in our yard had fallen. Once we started to look around at our neighbors, it was evident that we had been very lucky – there were many trees down – some in yards, some on houses, and some across streets. Pretty soon, all the neighbors gathered at one tree that had fallen across the road, and the kids had a fabulous time wading in all the standing water and catching little frogs. They were so excited to see each other and be outside, running around! They were soaked to the bone but it was so hot out, I think they really enjoyed getting wet. I was able to catch up with some of my girlfriends in the neighborhood and we all traded stories on how we’d spent the day. The guys started helping each other move trees, where possible, and they began to cut some of them apart. Eventually, as it got dark, we went back home and had dinner – Gary cooked macaroni & cheese on the stove top – we have gas cooking, so it worked out great!

We slept with the windows open on Sat night just hoping to get a little air flowing. That didn’t really happen, and soon we had to get up and shut the windows because some unexpected thunderstorms came through and it proceeded to POUR down rain the rest of the night. It was so humid, so stuffy – we hardly slept at all. Sunday morning, we woke up and while the weather had cooled off some, it was still warm. We decided to go for a drive and find somewhere we could get a hot meal, some ice, and a few groceries. We ended up driving almost 3 hours before we found electricity. We had a great time in College Station and really enjoyed our air conditioned car while we were driving! By that night, the weather had really cooled down a lot, so we opened the windows again while we slept. We were treated to gentle breezes, cool, crisp air, and the smell of fresh pine – it smelled like Christmas! There were so many pine trees in our neighborhood that had been knocked over by the hurricane winds, they had to be chopped up in pieces before you could move them – as a result, the air smelled delicious.

On Monday, we made another trip to College Station for supplies for my job. It felt so good to be able to deliver much-needed linens, towels, toiletries, and air mattresses to one of our assisted living facilities. We were pretty discouraged that day, as we’d been told that it could be 2-4 weeks before we had electricity again. So, it was nice to be able to make a difference and help someone else out.

The discouragement got tougher on Tuesday, when we were told that it could be 4-6 weeks before we had power. At that point, there was no mail, no newspaper, no TV (obviously), very spotty cell service, no blackberry service, no electricity anywhere – it was surreal. We felt very isolated and it was tough not knowing what was going on. Leah was acting out, Anna Claire was weepy, and I was sampling my favorite 3 food groups – chocolate, Advil and Diet Coke. These were desperate times. We did begin to see trucks arriving with supplies on Tuesday and FEMA had begun to hand out ice, water, and food, so people were beginning to have a little hope.

We made a decision to pack up and leave and go to San Antonio for the rest of the week. It was the best decision we could have made. Although we got power back to our house late Tuesday night, we still needed time away from everything. We had a fantastic 5 days in San Antonio – eating some of the best (and cheapest!) Mexican food, shopping in a Mexican market that reminded me a lot of our honeymoon in Cozumel, walking and perusing in shops on the Riverwalk, going to the zoo, and ending with a trip to Sea World. I can say that our moods definitely improved while we were away. However, it was obvious that the whole hurricane situation had taken a toll on the girls – Leah continued to be VERY busy and often inconsolable, and Anna Claire burst into tears at dinner one night and said, “I just want to go home.”

We’ve spent the past 2 days unpacking, grocery shopping (the grocery stores are still virtually empty, as they’ve all had to replace their inventory), doing laundry, and getting organized again to be back in school. It’s been so great to be back to “normal.”

The stories around here of what people are doing to help other people are so cool – there are people doing others’ laundry, making meals, and watching people’s children so they can work, and many more. There is a real spirit of camaraderie and closeness in our community that perhaps was fostered because we were completely out of touch with the outside world…we only had each other. We feel blessed to have had the time to just sit and chat with our neighbors and get to know them better.

While we now have electricity and water, there are still many, many others who do not. Please pray for them – they need it. They are discouraged, hot (our cool spell only lasted a few days), and many have lost everything.

Anyhoo, there were some funny moments along the way…perhaps I’ll share those in another post.

In the meantime, know that we are safe, we are back home, and we are enjoying life’s mundane moments immensely. Thanks to all of you who emailed to see how we were faring – we’re doing great!

One last note - many, many thanks to my brother for posting periodic updates about our welfare. I really appreciate it! Didn't he do great as a guest blogger? And so what if he got the name of the hurricane wrong? He can do complicated math problems that no one else can do - so there! :)