I guess the first thing I need to update on is Hurrican Ike, which ran right over us a few weeks ago. I had Thursday off to go get a second glucose tolerance test (which turned out worse than last year, gotta start being careful again) and then we shut down Friday to get ready for Ike. We had no idea how bad it would get, so we just stocked up on flashlights, batteries and water. By Friday afternoon, all of the grocery stores were completely picked over, but strange items, in my opinion at least. There were plenty of bottles of water and batteries, but the entire wall of paper towels and toilet paper at our local HEB was completely empty!!!
We lost power at about 1 am on Saturday morning and Ike came ashore on Galveston Island at about 2:15. The cell phone service was shaky at best so from 2 on we communicated with family mostly by texting, which often took hours to come through, but at least let us know that everyone was still ok. Allen and I moved to a makeshift bed on our bathroom floor at around 4 when the wind got really bad to get away from the windows on either side of our bed. My claustrophobia attacked up for awhile (amazing how darkness can make you feel as trapped as walls) but I managed to calm down by sleeping perpendicular to Allen with my feet in the bedroom and my head next to his side. For whatever reason, that made me feel a little less stuck. I knew the last thing I needed at that moment was a full scale panic attack, so I didn't care why it worked, just that I was calmer.
By 7, I was up and couldn't sleep any longer. Allen got up with me to survey the house and from inside, everything was fine. We couldn't tell about roof damage yet, but there was no water in the house, and looking into the yard, we hadn't even lost any trees. We just had a lot of mess we would have to clean up in the coming weeks.
Allen went back to bed for a few hours, while I still kept the texts going to make sure our families were alright. Got a disturbing text from my sister at 10ish saying that it wasn't over and a tree had just fallen on our parents' house, where she was staying for the storm. Once Allen got back up, we were stir crazy, so we packed up the dog in the jeep and decided to go see what we could find.
The jeep was helpful for getting over all of the debris and high water. The scariest thing we experienced was driving over a Sonic sign when the nearest Sonic was miles away.
We made it to Allen's parent's house where they had a generator out in their workshop where we were able to recharge our cell phones and get enough signal to get in touch with my family to find out they were ok, though they had a tree on the side of their house, one of the garage, and one on a power line in the back yard.
Following are some pics of my mother and grandmother's homes.
Needless to say from the pics, we are glad to all be ok and that nobody lost more in property than they did. We did not get our power back for 13 days. We obtaineed a generator that could run the frige and some fans overnight, keeping the food cold enough to make it through the day. Everything we started with got thrown out. Thankfully, two small cool fronts came through, allowing us to live slightly more comfortably even though we had no ac.
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