An Update: From WWAAAHHHH to WHOOO HOOOO!

Photo by Brian Shriver

From WWWAAAAAHHHHHH to WHOOO HOOOO!

Everyone in my family made it through Irene and her aftermath without any major catastrophes. Thank goodness! Yes, we went days without power, but some of us had running water and gas stoves. (Still tossed out most of the contents of the refrigerator and freezer.)  Yes, we were all separated for part of the time and often without even cell phone service so we were not able to check in with each other. That was nerve-wracking!

As it turned out, I did not evacuate during the actual hurricane. After thinking about it and talking with neighbors, I believed our house would be okay but access to our penninsula neighborhood might be cut off due to flooding. Most people in the neighborhood were staying, so I decided to take my chances. Evacuation is never easy, but certain kinds of pets make it really complicated and we have two cats. On Sunday evening after things quieted down a bit, I hopped the bridge and spent the night at my Mom's. My sister and neice and nephew extended their vacation in Florida so they remained out of harm's way. We were lucky to only go a few days without power.  There was a small fire at my Mom's senior housing building caused by the overuse of generators, but no one was hurt and she ended up spending a couple of nights at my house.

In my general area, things are slowly getting back to normal. There are still several thousand without power, and I know some people have suffered complete devastation.  My heart goes out to them.  But all in all, for me and mine, we were really quite lucky.

Thank you to everyone for your comments and emails full of good wishes and concern. I hope any of you who were visited by Irene came through as well as I did.

I have a lot of catching up to do here at A Sea of Books. Not surprisingly, I haven't been able to do much reading this week.  Actually, the most reading I did was during the actual hurricane! There was nothing else to do, and not much else I wanted to do!

P.S.  That's an actual picture taken from my neighborhood at the top of the post. Brian Shriver is an amazing photographer, and he specializes in panoramic shots. I strongly urge you to click on through and check out his work. I especially like this one of the Looff Carousel from Crescent Park in Riverside, Rhode Island. It's awesome!