Our own SunHerald.com opens with the HUGE headline: HAMMERED
What? Where? Huh?
It's not like we didn't have any damage ... We lost a couple feet of Katrina-worn 10-year-old fascia. Oh - and a couple of our young crape myrtles were slightly ruffled....
Our Gustav damage. Should we apply for federal assistance?I'm so ashamed and disappointed. Couldn't we all just be adult enough to admit that this whole thing ended up being more hype than storm? We're reading articles now referring to us as 'survivors' and 'victims'. What exactly qualifies one to be a 'survivor'? To hold this storm up to the same level of disaster as Hurricane Katrina is just plain insulting. We survived Katrina... We have been seriously irritated by Hurricane Gustav.
Now speaking of being seriously irritated... I must now explain why I didn't update the blog as I had intended when we first set off for the Sheraton Suites Galleria in Atlanta, Georgia despite the fact that I was sure they had wireless internet access and packed my laptop....
Number one: The 5 1/2 hour trip from our home to Atlanta, GA actually took us an estimated 10 1/2 hours. At least one half of the trip was spent traveling at approximately 15 mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic. One highlight included being stuck on the side of the road in a torrential downpour as I'm quite sure a tornado passed overhead. Then there was the wild pre-Labor Day traffic in the middle of the night in an area we didn't know... Surrounded by other exhausted evacuees from points unknown. Do they include ALL of the highway deaths when they're tallying up a hurricane's death toll?
Number two: About 20 minutes after arriving and setting up the laptop.. about 10 minutes after posting the previous entry... My laptop blue-screened twice.. Then came to a grinding halt. It did not survive the evacuation.
Number three: The complete lack of sleep, hygiene, and decent food plus the stress of it all made me quite ill by late last night. From around 1 am until we started packing the cars to come home I could be found lying in a fetal position in various places around the hotel room.
Yeah. Then we drove home.
I am aware that the bright side of all of this is that we're alive and well and only have an irritating piece of fascia to deal with as far as repairs go.... However, please forgive me if it takes me a few weeks to be able to truly savor such a bright side.
I suppose I should give the news outlets a break - because I found myself comparing this experience to Katrina a few times as well... It's just that it wasn't the hurricane that was the problem this time. I swear to you - for every miserable and frightening moment of the evacuation I longed to be home in a flooded house with no electricity praying the roof wouldn't come off. Let's put it this way - at no point during the aftermath of Katrina did I end up in a fetal position anywhere.
It's too much. If it's only too much because we've already been through too much... If that is the reason we can't handle evacuating... Then so be it. But the fact remains.. We can't handle evacuating.
Hanna? Ike? Josephine? Line 'em up. We're sheltering in place.
Now I'd like to take a deep breath and thank everybody for all the thoughts, prayers, concern, and support throughout this ordeal. Special thanks to those who offered us a place to stay. You're amazing people - and our doors are always open to any of you if we could ever provide safe harbor.
Note for clarification: This post refers exclusively to the effects of Gustav on our area. Please consider that the effects were devastating in areas along the Louisiana coast and, of course, for unfortunate individuals in all areas affected. Using hyperbole to describe our overall damage locally is a slap in the face to those who were actually 'hammered' by this storm.
Now speaking of being seriously irritated... I must now explain why I didn't update the blog as I had intended when we first set off for the Sheraton Suites Galleria in Atlanta, Georgia despite the fact that I was sure they had wireless internet access and packed my laptop....
Number one: The 5 1/2 hour trip from our home to Atlanta, GA actually took us an estimated 10 1/2 hours. At least one half of the trip was spent traveling at approximately 15 mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic. One highlight included being stuck on the side of the road in a torrential downpour as I'm quite sure a tornado passed overhead. Then there was the wild pre-Labor Day traffic in the middle of the night in an area we didn't know... Surrounded by other exhausted evacuees from points unknown. Do they include ALL of the highway deaths when they're tallying up a hurricane's death toll?
Number two: About 20 minutes after arriving and setting up the laptop.. about 10 minutes after posting the previous entry... My laptop blue-screened twice.. Then came to a grinding halt. It did not survive the evacuation.
Number three: The complete lack of sleep, hygiene, and decent food plus the stress of it all made me quite ill by late last night. From around 1 am until we started packing the cars to come home I could be found lying in a fetal position in various places around the hotel room.
Yeah. Then we drove home.
I am aware that the bright side of all of this is that we're alive and well and only have an irritating piece of fascia to deal with as far as repairs go.... However, please forgive me if it takes me a few weeks to be able to truly savor such a bright side.
I suppose I should give the news outlets a break - because I found myself comparing this experience to Katrina a few times as well... It's just that it wasn't the hurricane that was the problem this time. I swear to you - for every miserable and frightening moment of the evacuation I longed to be home in a flooded house with no electricity praying the roof wouldn't come off. Let's put it this way - at no point during the aftermath of Katrina did I end up in a fetal position anywhere.
It's too much. If it's only too much because we've already been through too much... If that is the reason we can't handle evacuating... Then so be it. But the fact remains.. We can't handle evacuating.
Hanna? Ike? Josephine? Line 'em up. We're sheltering in place.
Now I'd like to take a deep breath and thank everybody for all the thoughts, prayers, concern, and support throughout this ordeal. Special thanks to those who offered us a place to stay. You're amazing people - and our doors are always open to any of you if we could ever provide safe harbor.
Note for clarification: This post refers exclusively to the effects of Gustav on our area. Please consider that the effects were devastating in areas along the Louisiana coast and, of course, for unfortunate individuals in all areas affected. Using hyperbole to describe our overall damage locally is a slap in the face to those who were actually 'hammered' by this storm.
1 comment:
Glad you and your family are ok along with your home. I can't imagine how difficult the process was.
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