SHEs Organized

Hello! I was the first one downstairs this morning at 9:30 a.m. Seems everyone slept in and it was after 10 before I saw the others. Dgrd-H is still sleeping, though, as she worked her 12 hour shift last night. Dgrd's Fiance-C has gone out somewhere and ds and ddil have gone grocery shopping. Ddil's dmom-T is chopping veggies for tonight's dinner - beef stew.

I have rest yesterday's posts. Dee, I was sorry to read about your dgrson-17 accident. I'm glad everyone is ok! I'm also happy that Rose & Sweetie and Blessed's Dmom and DD came through the hurricane unharmed. Blessed, your dd is doing a wonderful thing by helping those in her building.

The last I've heard from Harmony, last evening is they were able to make a trip to Home Depot. After 3 1/2 hours there they came home and got their generator hooked up for some power in their house. So that's one step back to normal. The city water seems to be working again, too.

We are experiencing the the remnants of Ian here now. The rain started yesterday afternoon, off and on for a while. I think it rained all night and we just had another shower. Weather is supposed to be like this for a couple of days.

Apparently we are going to have a movie watch party tonight to see the new Hocus Pocus 2.

Our vestiges of the storm arrived last evening, with different reporting pinpointing the worst at 7:00 or 9:00. Our worst wind-gusts did top 40, but they were sparse at that high level - mostly just sustained 20s. Everyone reports pets on edge. We so often get power-outages, but this time only flickerings. Don't know why - many others around here did lose it.

We got a poor night's sleep for various reasons including some about the storm. That could have been remedied by just lying abed a bit, which didn't happen.

But that didn't stop Saturday morning from coming down, as Kris K's (paraphrased) song says.

Various children were up and at-'em at dawn, calling and visiting to make sure we were okay after the torrent/storm. At one point we had both dstepson and dd42 here chatting, after individually thinking they would come clear off any debris we had on driveway. Dd was also bringing me my part of her Misfit order - kale and shitakes. She also brought laundry detergent because I'd mentioned rationing it here until we could get out to buy some (which was not going to be a problem).

Anyway, for some reason, I didn't react well to the early-bird activity and socializing. They were hardly gone when suddenly I had a dizzy spell.
Highly unusual for me, and I hardly knew how to describe it to HRH (how do you describe a dizzy spell, anyway?). He got me something to drink and I went back to bed.

After early nap (night finish?) I awakened and seemed fine, immediately got my usual pint of morning water. So I guess that was just a sleepy reaction, or maybe I hadn't eaten enough yesterday because of goings-on.

I was hoping Harmony or Ramblin' might have technological methods to come see us today,
but having heard through grapevines here that they are safe, I won't expect blow-by-blow commentary yet. (smile.)

My cousin in FL's center has not checked in, but was expecting much more in the way of inconvenience, not really scary at all.

blessed's ddyounger is being angelic, I believe.


Oh, thanks for updates, Sunny

Hello from sunny Fl

Sweetie and I left home this morning and are relaxing in a Marriott outside of Ft Lauderdale. Had my first hot cup of coffee just a while ago and I can flush the toilet without refilling it with a bucket of water.

Blessed.. I-75 is shut down a good part of the way to Naples from the north and I doubt they are letting people in to you moms area. There is very little gas around our area which is also creating problems for people. I fill my car with gas the Friday before the storm and also filled a 5 gallon container.

We are now relaxing in an air condition room with the tv going and a shower waiting for me to enter.

The storm was absolutely brutal with 13 hours of Hurricane force winds that never quit. We decided to ride the storm out in our laundry room because it was a bit quieter in there. That lasted till the water started leaking down on us from a light fixture so we moved to our master bedroom closet.

Thursday we had no phone service, as well as no power, water or internet. We did have a tradition radio all through the storm but I didn’t listen to it much because of all the hype. We were able to get out of the house in the morning. The destruction was beyond belief. It will take years for this area to recover.

So far 59 people have died…many foolishly when they didn’t believe the storm surge would reach the levels that it did. Most drown. They stayed in homes on the beaches and barrier islands. The storm washed out the causeway to both islands close to me making rescues impossible. Both the Naples and Ft Myers piers are gone along with many of the shops and restaurants around them.

I knew we were not going to be hit by the surge and my home is made of cinder block and it stood strong with little damage. My son and his family left before the storm and stayed where I am now. Friday they left for Bradenton, Fl where my ddil’s father lives. My son tried to come back to Cape Coral today but I-75 is shut down and he can get in. Plus there is very little gas anywhere in the region. He says he’s gonna try again tomorrow.

I am getting ready to jump into the shower. It will be the first since Tuesday. I set up watering stations in both my kitchen and bathroom so we could at least wash, but of course we had to use cold water. Took way to long to heat up a pot on the grill and I didn’t want to waste the gas. I can live without power, but it’s really difficult to do without water. I did fill my tub up though.

The lines for free water, ice and food are miles long and it’s the same for gas. The grocery stores are running out of food as fast as they could put it out. I had at lease 20 cans of soup and 5’of fruit. Thursday night we had hot dogs and bake beans and last nigh hamburgers on hot dog buns and potato salad.

I lost everything out of my freezer and refrigerator. I reported it to my insurance but don’t know whether I will get anything for it.

I’m done for the moment and that hot water shower is calling for me.

Many thanks for y’all’s prayers and well wishes. My guess is Harmony is still without internet. Glad to know she is ok and the same with Blesses dd and mom