Hurricane Isaac

Last week, Louisiana decided to initiate us into the state.  Or, I suppose, the gulf of Mexico decided to initiate us and throw us hurricane Isaac.  

We don't have a TV, and I stay at home with Walter and my Pink Cheeks biz.  I get most of my news from the Daily Show and Colbert Report, and they were on vacation, plus they don't have a weather person.  So, basically I had no idea a hurricane was heading our way until the Sunday evening before.  Really though, that is still plenty of notice for a former tornado country girl. 

We got a hurricane survival kit going.  We bought batteries and ice and lots of fig newtons.  For some reason, we also were told to get lots of water.  I didn't understand it at the time, but hurricanes make your water taste awful, and smell like rotting fish.  Could it actually be rotting fish?  I don't know.  

It was definitely windy.  The trees were swaying back and forth like they were at a music festival.  Most people had their windows boarded up with plywood.  We didn't.  I said a silent prayer for the neighborhood bunny rabbits (two domesticated bunnies roam our block, Walter likes to feed them bread).   I have experienced very bad storms before, and this was similar to those with the exception of it carrying on and on and on like the energizer bunny.  Our power went out the night of the storm. 

 It stayed off for 5 more days.  It was hot and sweaty.  Even our furniture seemed to sweat.  Everything was slippery.  Luckily we have a gas powered stove and water heater, so we could cook and boil water for coffee in our french press.  We have a tiny portable dvd player, and we would sit around by candlelight watching Wallace and Gromit on a teeny, tiny screen.  Walter did a lot of shirt-less play in the kitchen sink.  He really liked the french press plunger.  He also liked drinking melted fudgcicle out of his sippy cups.

Our 96 year old neighbor's power was turned on the day after the hurricane.  That sounds fair to me, though it was hard to watch him come out of his house with his jacket on (the ac gets a little cold for him).  A few days into the power outage, we realized Mr. Bonvelaine had a very convenient outdoor outlet facing our window.  He kindly agreed to letting us run an extension cord to it and then we had a couple of slightly less miserable nights with a breeze of a fan.  Thank you kind neighbor!

Now that our power is restored, I find myself missing the power outage ever so slightly.  It was nice to be forced not to work and to have non-stop creative play time with the whole family together.  It wasn't all Leave it to Beaver, because irritability levels were stretched with the heat, for sure, but  a lot of the time it was quiet, peaceful and calm.