My first hurricane was approximately 72 hours after my very first earthquake. Despite how dramatic that sounds, I really don’t have much to say, but I feel like I should say something. I have more to say about my recent encounters with cockroaches and the status of my dirty feet than I do about a storm that issued 300,000 to evacuate NYC and the complete shut down of the MTA train system. Did I mention our bathroom has come down with a case of mold? Anyways, back to the hurricane.
On Friday, the New York Post was “Taken by Storm” and by Monday Beyonce’s pregnancy was the cover story. I, like all the newspapers, had more to say about the VMA’s than the hurricane on Monday morning. However, a lot of people could not make it to work on Monday (allegedly) and some even suffered power outages, so there were signs that the hurricane did in fact happen. Missing the VMA’s because your power is out? Talk about devastation.
From my perspective my first hurricane was little more than a boring weekend. It was merely the fizzle at the end of a hype-filled week of hurricane tracking. We did as our mothers and the Mayor said and reacted to the state of emergency. We stood in line for over an hour at the grocery store and we stocked up on all the survival items – chips, salsa, several processed cheese products, and hot pockets. It looked more like we were hosting a Super Bowl party than preparing to hunker down. We filled up empty water bottles that were strewn all over our apartment, charged our can’t-live-without devices and we were ready for the show. It was just going to me, Mike and Irene. A stormy and exciting party for three. But guess who didn’t show? Mean Irene.
We watched, we waited, we stayed up late like kids on Christmas Eve. We ate and then waited to be ready to eat again. We got so bored waiting we played “hurricane hair”. When we got bored with that we had hurricane mimosas or Hurrmosas (not to be confused with the Spanish sister hermosa). The loudest thing we heard all night was the sounds of popping champagne bottles. We awoke Sunday morning expecting to be in the eye of the storm but we had apparently slept right through it. Mike documented the damage to our street.
The only real damage we suffered was to our diets and our backs after not stretching before lounging for more than 48 hours. I went to bed on Friday and didn’t get up until Monday morning. Next time I’m that lazy and worthless for an entire weekend I’m going to say I had an “Irene weekend.”