Hurrication Update

thanks to everyone who has emailed and called me. i appreciate your concern about us. we're alive and safe. we are at a la quinta in san marcos, tx., which is in what is called the I-35 corridor between san antoniio and austin.

we boarded up our home and packed and left friday morning. got on interstate 10 about noon-thirty. our trip took about an hour longer, due to stop and go traffic on the west side of houston, but all in all was a pretty good trip.

hubs was not going to leave at all, and i had decided to stay with him because i tried to look into the future and how i would feel if missy and i evacuated without him and something happened to him. we told missy she could go but she felt like i did.

friday morning i decided to ask hubs what our gameplan was for weathering the storm. our bedroom hall is the only space not walled by windows. so we were going to sit there. then i asked him, what if the storm surge comes? what if our roof comes off? his answer to leaving had been, where do we go? so when i asked him to really, really, look at what would we do in the house were Ike to destroy it, he finally began to see logic. so, we looked online for a hotel and found one that took pets right off. good omen. we packed and left. lots left behind, as in our entire lives. but what can you do?

even evacuated to a safe place with internet and air conditioning, the last few days have been very traumatic for us. it's been next to impossible to find information about the status of our locality. eventually, by late saturday and sunday, we began to hear from friends and family. my brother works for our city and he had to weather the storm at his home, which survived 8 tall pine trees falling and barely missing it. he was on call so he had to navigate the roads at 6 pm saturday to go to work on a skeleton crew clearing the roads and then manning the phones at the emergency call center.

my brother found time to drive to our home and found it in great condition, thank goodness. the top of the chimney that keeps water out had flown off and the back fence is leaning, and that is all. i cannot tell you how much of a relief that was. our street never flooded, even though we are 1/4 mile from cedar bayou, which flows into galveston bay. we were not in a mandatory evac zone because our land is very high. it is on a plate separate from the bottomland that is pretty much sea level.

we are about 25 feet above sea level. and we do not have flood insurance because we were always told we do not need it. i probably do not need to tell you that hubs and i were sweating it out heavily, since all of the meteorological warnings predicted a 22 foot storm surge up into galveston bay and its tributaries, cedar bayou being a main one of those and the houston ship channel aka buffalo bayou being the other main one. i had figured we were just f*cked. my mindset was, hey, i was never gonna use all those art supplies anyway. lol, trying to rationalize so the sting and hurt would be lessened.

so, anyway, here we are today. our house still has no electricity and the water is not drinkable due to the water plant being flooded. hubs helped bring the refinery down on thursday before he left work and it is still down until they can get proper power, but all reports from his coworkers who were on shelter-in duty there are good. the refinery sustained very little damage and it hardly rained there at all. they are ready to bring it back up, but the utility infrastructure of the area is delaying it. you might live in a new area where the utilities are underground, but on my gulf coast they are largely hobbled together above ground, pole to pole, susceptible to wind, trees, wild animals and lightning. just my 2 cents, but if the gov't wanted to help lessen the effects of weather along the gulf coast, they would use the rebuild dollars on relocating the utility infrastructures underground where possible. every time this happens, that is what is damaged the most. who listens to little old me though.

I waited til today to update the blog because the wireless router for our hotel building wasn't working until today. i was going to find another hotel if it hadn't been fixed by today. like hubs said, if the tv in the hotel room didn't work, he'd be pissed. same with my internet, jeebus. anyway, all is well for time being at least.

hubs left to go back this morning. he just couldn't wait around. he had to go back and check out what's going on. me, i am planning to stay right here in san marcos until our water and electricity are back online and good. poor missy is really distraught. she spent all weekend refusing to give up hope that she could return to school in beaumont today, despite us telling her that was a pipe dream. the downtown there had 9 feet of water in it. they and western louisiana got pelted by ike just as much if not more than we did. missy and her school friends spent all weekend trying in vain to find out when they were supposed to be back at school.

we finally found out this morning that missy's tentative date to return to school is Sept. 29, and that is at the earliest. turns out that a lot of the campus flooded. her dorm room is on the 3rd floor, so luckily her room did not flood, and the roof is still okay. she is still not happy about having all that time to fill though. i feel bad for her, but she is really impatient by nature, so it is gonna be testy, lol.

well, she wants to go see "burn after reading" so we are off to do that. i'll check back in later...