Hurricane Irene

Irene on 8/25/2011 headed our way

OK, here it comes, Hurricane Irene. Yep it is right on track to hit us straight on here in Virginia Beach. We have been preparing for this for the last week, buying groceries, getting gas, filling up water jugs, stock piling on food, putting all the lawn projectiles furniture away. It gets just a bit crazy when a hurricane comes upon us as we have just a bit too much time to prepare.

You see, I grew up in Oklahoma, you know the land of tornadoes....."Hey, look up in the sky (no! its not Superman) it's a twister...JUMP IN THE DITCH."  5 minutes warning and then its over 5 minutes later.  The sky is beautiful and peaceful after a tornado....perfect weather to clean up the mass of debris that is left in its wake.  Hurricanes give too much warning!

So today I had planned on a few things to do around the house BUT......Cannot mow the yard, cannot weed the gardens, cannot edge the lawn, cannot cut the hedges, cannot paint the house, sorry Mavrick...cannot walk the dog....good luck going potty in the category 2 - 100 mile an hour wind and rain! Ok so truthfully I might get only one or two of those things done.....if I'm lucky! or unlucky depends on one's perception)

We do know what will happen within few hours....NO POWER!
(you won’t believe this but just now in the middle of writing this blog post the power went out here at the house…the very second I wrote no power!) so that means no television, no computer, no lights, no waffles this morning!!!!! Ahhhh should have woke up 15 min earlier! At least I got my coffee. Oh yeah, we can read in a book….no lights and the storm makes it dark outside….Oh yeah, we can play board games….really?!....Oh yeah, I made the stupid comment that I wasn’t going to move the big heavy patio grill inside the garage and if the power went out I would go out and cook in the rain!!!! Little did I know it would go out in the first few hours of the storm…AHHHHH.

Okay, get out the candles, get the flashlights ready to use, get the buckets of water for the toilet….ahhh I forgot to take my shower last night so I could shave…after all I need to be clean and smart looking when the rescue teams come for us while we are on the roof top surrounded by flood waters! I bet I am going to look like Tom Hanks in Castaway when they rescue him off of the deserted island. He did clean up pretty good afterwards.

Speaking of cleaning up…..guess what we will get to do once this storm has passed? Yep, pick up all the down branches, cut all the broken limbs, pick up all the debris left in the yard from the neighbor’s house that flew off, go look around the neighborhood for all of the stuff that flew off of our house, reinstall/replace the vinyl siding that was ripped down, put all the patio furniture back out in the yard.  Labor Day weekend in next week….guess I will still be laboring thru that holiday!

Just relax…..stay calm….everything should be fine. We still have plenty of Poptarts and Vienna sausages. Consider the candles romantic. Consider the power outages as a way to get back to nature.  Consider this a forced vacation, an opportunity to have a little peace and quiet as well as a much needed rest. Consider ourselves lucky!

Seriously my friends….stay safe. Count everything a blessing.  You never know how much you have until you don’t have it anymore.  My prayers go out to all those who are being hit much worse than we are.  May God Bless.


Power went out in the middle of writing this blog and then came back on for a few minutes with enough time to post this.  This will be a record of our existence should anyone find us trapped inside of our boarded up dwelling and huddled around a neverending monopoly board eating cold vienna sausages from a can and singing church songs.