Surviving Irma

Well, survived the big storm with only a lot of branches down, two broken attic windows, one broken Buddha statue and scratches down the side of the car.  The latter two being my fault. I dropped the Buddha while moving it into the garage, I tripped, holding the buddha and fell on top of it -- so the the Buddha broke my fall and I wasn't hurt, much, just skinned my knees. Buddha though smashed to pieces -- Then I scraped the car trying to back it out of the garage -- the garage being small (one car, old fashion) and stuffed with patio furniture etc., as I was backing up something fell against the side of the car -- shoot. I felt like an idiot.... took me 30 minutes just to back that car out of the garage... though it was the first time I ever put the car in the garage -- anyhoo

Spent the storm with a good friend, Candy, a fellow widow who I met through Grief Support Group.  I had noticed, before the storm, but after the guys had boarded me up and left, that they didn't board up the attic windows.  Candy & I went up into the attic to see what we could do to secure at least the largest one, and lo and behold, right next to the window was an antique hurricane shutter and an antique hand drill.  Candy had a cordless drill with her, but decided to try out the antique one to drill holes into the old shutter. She thought it was "fun" and "great exercise" ha!  She drilled holes and I screwed in the screws and we managed to board it up from the inside, which was good esp. since that is one of the windows broken during the storm.

We lost power at 10 p.m. the night of the storm and my "battery operated" radio (which I checked the week before and was working perfectly) decided not to work at all, so we were totally in the dark (literally) but also having no clue where the storm was going/heading etc.  I had bought a plug in landline phone and plugged that in, and when a friend from Oklahoma called to check on us, I asked her to check the weather channel and she became our "unofficial weather girl" for the rest of the night, calling in updates every 30 minutes.  Thank you, Delana from OK!  It was a long scary sleepless night, wind howling outside. Irma was fortunately not a direct hit on us and downgraded to a Cat 2 by then. But scary enough. Candy, me, two dogs and three cats hunkered down together. Fortunately, we had power back on about 19 hours later, and we uncorked a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

After the storm passed, the guys who were due to un-board called and said they would be by after they removed a large tree branch that had fallen on one of their roofs. Then, two of the fellows injured themselves, one ending up in the hospital...

So Candy and I managed to un-board the windows we could reach using my 6 foot ladder -- just to get some light into the house (as the power was still out) and open the front door.  I didn't realize that Candy had never used the cordless drill (it belonged to her late husband) and she didn't even know how to put a drill bit into it, so I showed her how it worked and, my gosh, the woman had tears in her eyes when we got the boards down. One empowering moment for her.  (Later, I gave her the antique hand drill as a memento -- with a card reminding her that "we girls can do anything!")

Finally, house was totally un-boarded on Friday. It was good to "let the light shine in", felt like living in a cave with the boards on.  Still working on clean-up in the yard. Finally can use the pool again. I tell you, a stressful time here at The Pink House.... but I am counting my blessings as it could've been a lot worse...

And Thank God for good friends!