All's Well that Ends Well

Well, we survived. Apparently the national news made Irene look like a terrifying ordeal. She wasn't as mean as I thought she would be. That's not to say she was nice. Not one bit. Fortunately for us, there seems to be little to no damage to the house (I've got to wait for it to dry out a little underneath to take a look at the duct work to see if it survived. And I've got some electrical in the kitchen out that needs to be assessed and repaired pronto. My stove and dishwasher are out, so you see why the rush is necessary...)

I'd like the jerk faces (typed with love, not anger) working with beau to know that aside from the unexplained electrical outage in the kitchen, it survived. Those floors that I painstakingly and lovingly stained and sealed are 100% intact, thank you very much. I did demolish my manicure and pedicure today working in the yard, so I think that bet money should go to the re-beautification of Amy. Cash is fine.

So I thought I'd share the last 24 hours with you through photographs. Obviously, I didn't take my camera out into the storm (too busy drinking, eating Oreos and playing dominoes), and you don't get to see how high the water came in my neighborhood (high!), but I have some before and after shots.

I think I mentioned that I stocked up on Hurricane Food. This is the stuff I bought specifically for the hurricane. Clearly I am a very healthy eater. Don't worry, it is not all I had on hand; I had normal food, too. Notice the loaf of bread. That's what happens when a gallon of water rolls on it in the car. Don't worry though, it still makes a fine peanut butter sandwich to satiate a gnawing hunger that grows after working in the yard all day.

I also think I told you about the shed Tetris I played to get as much yard junk in a tiny shed as possible. Here's what that looks like.



That's 2 gas grills with side burners, 2 bikes, 7 plants, a table, 2 chairs, 2 coolers, and 2 lanterns on top of all of the goods that hang out in the already jam packed shed. Messy and crowded!

When I woke up the water was starting to rise. Here's what it normally looks like at low tide.

This is maybe eight houses down the street that our house backs up to. Like I said, we are very close to the water. Sometimes it gets closer.

Like the next morning. I posted some photos before I left the house, but it rained while I was typing that entry. Here's what it looked like when I left the house.

The bottom photo above is the same curve as the bottom photo in the pair of low tide photos above. (I couldn't get the same angle because the water had already come up too high.) Crazy, huh? Boy was I glad I had beau's truck and not my little car!

The drive to Andy and Meagan's Safe House was just as wet.

In the bottom two photos the water has come up over the retaining wall, across the grass and sidewalk and into the street. These guys didn't seem to mind, though.

I made it safely to the Safe House, rode out the storm and came back to my house early in the morning. Meagan came with me to help assess the damage and then we went to the marina to check out their sail boat. It fared just fine.

Our house had a lonely but adventurous night. I came home to this:





See the line of debris on the house right below where the siding begins? That's also where my kitchen begins. We lucked out. Had the water come up another inch or so we would have had water in the house. You can see the water line much more clearly on the white fence. The line comes up to my knee; about a foot and a half or so.

The wind was pretty fierce last night. It blew down some branches in our yard.

I had to clean it all up.

Our little limbs are nothing compared to these two trees that were taken out by the wind.

Another house around the corner had a tree fall on it. I didn't take a photo because I thought it would be tacky to do that while the poor homeowners were just getting home and digesting the idea of a tree falling on their house.

We were lucky, but not totally lucky. Like I said, the crawl space flooded. When I got home there was standing water in it. I cleaned up the yard and swept the puddles of standing, nasty water and when i was done with that, I decided it was time to clean out the nasty, standing water under the house. We don't have a sump pump (yet), so I had to use the Shop Vac to get as much of the water out as possible. There was quite a bit.





It is possible that I'm not bothered by their butting in in this particular instance. :)