Jalapeños are a Lifestyle

I am operating on very little sleep at the moment because I stayed up last night to watch the storm come ashore. The eye of Ike passed directly over the top of my house. I want to be very clear here. I do not mean that the eye of Ike passed near my house. I mean that in my front yard there were winds of 100+ miles per hour one moment and 15 minutes later the birds were out and the mosquitoes were biting….and an hour later it started up all over again. I know this because just a couple of miles away (further to the western part of the eye), they were broadcasting live from a hotel that now looks like a war zone. While this was a very scary thing to contemplate, I knew that of all the possible Bad Things that could happen to my house this was not at the top of the list. Worse still would have been to be on the eastern side of the eye or worse just outside of the eastern side of the eye. That would have resulted in catastrophic storm surges in my neighborhood….much MUCH worse than what you are seeing on the news in the NASA area.

As the day dawned and the news crews were able to begin broadcasting from our area, I was closely watching the landmarks to see if I could figure out based on the damage I say whether it was likely the storm surge had flooded my home. (I was resolutely blocking out what 100 mph wind might do, choosing instead to focus on a brand new roof and the hurricane resistant windows we spent a fortune on.) I could tell based on the damage I saw that it was close…very close. I also knew that they weren’t letting any residents back into my neighborhood for the forseeable future. So I tried very hard to focus on building the virtue of patience since I didn’t think my husband would be willing to run the blockades to get an eyewitness report for at least another day if not more. (He stayed in the area but on higher, safer ground.)

Well God bless the stupid people! I mean that sincerely. The people that stayed behind to ride this storm out are certifiably nuts. I want to shake every last one of them until their teeth rattle and tell them that their LIVES are way more precious than anything and that they have NO BUSINESS staying behind. Nevertheless, some of them are my neighbors and they have our cell phone numbers and we’ve gotten an eyewitness report about the condition of our home.  I love them dearly for this….even though I am still teetering on the brink of rattling some teeth.

I have a house.

I was right. It was close. Very close. The water came up our street to just a couple of houses away from us. The wind knocked down a very large oak tree in front of our house but it fell away from our home. By all external appearances there is no major damage to our home. I fully expect that some water will have blasted it’s way into my home and there will be minor clean up and repairs associated with that. I also expect to have to refill my refrigerator and freezer when the power gets turned back on and we are being told that may be as long as four weeks. Small potatoes compared to what could have happened if the storm had come ashore even a mile or so further west.

Nevertheless, our area is devastated. The damage is catastrophic. And I don’t just mean the Houston area. Cuba is devastated. Haiti is devastated. The Turks and Caicos is devastated and I am keenly aware of how slim the margin was of our own escape.

If you haven’t already, please consider donating to the http://american.redcross.org/”> face=Arial>Red Cross or http://crs.org/”> face=Arial>Catholic Relief Services.