Power came back on around 8pm tonight and one minute we were all whiny and “how come the other side of the street has had power all day while we are sitting here steaming and getting snarky at each other” and the next we were all “whoop! whoop!” and feeling repentant because really the loss of air conditioning and a functioning coffee machine is nothing when others have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their lives. 

 

I am not kidding about the “whoop whoop” either. When the lights went on, the neighborhood was ringing. Truly, it was like Party Central in our street. And oh, the blessed relief of cooled air. 

 

Ike was noisy and he was not pretty. But we were lucky to be inland and fairly sheltered. Still, it is not a comfortable sight to look out into your yard and see the trees whipping their heads in circles and almost to the ground. Or to hear random booms and not know what is happening. This morning we noticed the wind had rolled the neighbor’s full-size steel basketball hoop about 15 feet across her driveway. Before the hurricane hit an evacuating friend listening to NPR phoned me with tips and so I had braced the garage doors with 2 X 4s. Half of them ended up being forced out. I can only imagine that Ike was trying to get in. 

 

We don’t have the recommended “interior room” in our open plan house so instead we transformed my walk in closet into a nest for the children, so they could be near us and away from the windows. It worked out well. They were shielded from the worst of the noise and slept for most of the night, and we were all together without actually having to host them in our room. Except for The Wictor, who had to be extracted halfway through after kicking Baby Sister in the face, and spent the rest of the night kicking me in the face. I was mostly awake anyway, listening to the progress of the hurricane on the radio. 

 

This morning we went out and surveyed the damage, and we got off pretty lightly. Apart from a lawn strewn with minor snapped-off branches, there is just this: 

What used to be a fence and the remains of a tree. We finally got to meet the back door neighbors. I am sure will be learning a lot more about each other in the days to come, now that we can see into each others houses. 

 

Of course, there was also the problem of what to do all day with the kids when you can’t go out and there is no power. And you are not a board-game loving kind of family. Mostly they amused themselves. And then, if they asked for TV or the internet too much, we put them to work doing useful stuff:

 

We were hoping for power by dinner time but it wasn’t to be. As we were debating whether to eat sandwiches or try and light a fire on the patio, The Daddy came up with this idea. It’s kind of like a camp fire, but indoors. I started to regret not buying marshmallows. 

 

 

So, that was our Ike experience. Yet again, we have been lucky. Reports are that parts of Houston will be without power for two to four weeks. Buildings have been torn apart in the central city, and let’s not even talk about the coast. We’re still waiting to hear exactly how bad that is. 

 

One more thing. We have a house guest, a refugee from the storm. We found her in the fetal position on our doorstep this morning, cold and shivering. We think she was probably out in it the whole time, and maybe even fell from a tree. We wrapped her up and she slept all day, this evening she was still pretty weak but managed to eat and drink something.

 And she is making an enormous racket in our shower right now, banging and crashing about. It was the only place I could think to put her. I actually wanted her put out in the street but The Daddy won’t hear of it until he is sure she is strong enough. 

 

The Daddy wants to call her Agrippina. The kids and I are calling her Sandy.