Being Called Home

Travis got a call from work yesterday. He is an electrician, but it was the maintenance crew that asked if he could come in. They need help putting things back in order at the plant so they can start back up as soon as the power is restored. I cannot properly express how much stress was lifted from my shoulders with this call. Money will still be tight, between evacuation costs and having to completely restock a fridge, but at least we have paychecks in sight. Since it was not an immediate call back, we have decided to wait until this weekend to drive back home. We don't have electricity or running water yet, so it would be difficult to live there still. Our friend Jenna has offered up her house whenever we do return since she periodically has electricity.

Rachel told me that it will be a minimum of two weeks before our employer re-evaluates the situation to decide when non-essential employees can come back to work. I know that the power went off in the building I work in, so we should have quite the recovery period.

This all equates to at least one week when we get back of NOTHING FOR NIKKI TO DO. I will have to clean out the fridge, but that's about the bulk of it. Maybe I can find some relief work...

Ike Incites Insomnia

I seem to have developed insomnia in the past week. I have been out of work since last Thursday morning and I feel like ever since then, my ability to properly rest has gone down the drain. The first night (Thursday) we spent at Jacen's was fine. I slept GREAT, actually.

Friday night is when it all started. I was exhausted by midnight and ready to go to sleep and was able to as soon as my head it the pillow. The wind from the hurricane woke me up at 3 and of course I was frantic to see what was going on. By the time I went back to bed at 4 (I just wanted to sleep it all away) my mind was not so quick to be with me in slumber. I kept worrying about the possibility of a branch coming through the window and impaling us in our sleep. Or that a tree could just fall on the house and squash us. Needless to say, it took me at least 30 minutes to fall back asleep.

Saturday night was a similar story. I was completely drained from spending the day moving branches and checking out the devastation in our area, so I fell asleep quickly. Travis woke somewhere around 3am because he was sick from the still heat. After he drank some water, he turned the generator back on and we moved the AC unit and fan into the bedroom. That was much more comfortable, but then the little dogs on the bed (three chihuahuas) were all vying for quality space, which appeared to be anything within two inches from me. Of course, my mind was up and running again. What were we going to do? We only had two or three days worth of gas to run the generator. What do we do when we run out of food? Water? As it was, we were already having to plunge the water down the toilet each time it need to be flushed since there was no water pressure. We can't live like this.

Sunday we made the decision to go to David and Stephanie's house, where we know we could stay as long as we need. The promise of electricity, proper water pressure with water that isn't mixed with sewage and functioning grocery stores and gas stations lured us to northeast Texas. I am so glad we decided to go this route, but the stress doesn't stop here. We still have a family of animals that have been uprooted from their homes. We have our three cats and a dog, plus my sister's chihuahua/minpin and our friend's lab. Falling asleep is never my problem, it's staying asleep. For the past two nights, I have battled with a dog or four barking in the middle of the night and staying comfortable in a stuffy room filled with animals (we finally opened the windows last night - it is SO much cooler here than by the Gulf). Each night I wake up because of something the animals are doing and then my mind is off to the races again. I'm approaching an hour of restlessness each night before I'm able to fall back asleep.

I'm turning into a zombie running on coffee, so don't be surprised if this blog is a little jumbled.

Disaster Relief

Travis and David picked up Ariel and Robert from the airport yesterday with no problems. I'm happy to have a piece of my family back together. It's nice to have a little normalcy, despite the chaos. I sat with Ariel last night at the computer and signed her up for FEMA assistance. They announced that anyone who lives on Galveston Island should apply immediately, even if they haven't seen the damage to their home because virtually every residence on the island has been damaged. We also signed her up on the Red Cross Safe and Well list, as I did earlier in the day. I know that all our family knows we are well, but it feels better to get it registered. Today we plan to get her and Travis signed up for Disaster Unemployment Assistance with the Texas Workforce Commission.

David and Stephanie have been super gracious for keeping all of us and our pets at their home. I am so thankful to have friends like this. Ariel and Robert are sleeping on a mattress in Wednesday's room, so they have their own space. I think it was weird for them to see some of the photos and videos of Galveston. We saw a shrimp boat up in the parking lot for the restaurants that Ariel and Robert used to work at. It was leaning against the pay booth where we used to drop of our stamped tickets.

I think we are going to head over to a larger town today to buy some groceries and find a Best Buy. I'm hoping they will be able to take care of our broken laptop before we head back to our house. No word from Cowboy Willy yet that our power has been restored.

Here is just a portion of our current zoo (not pictured: two chihuahua mixes and three cats)...

*Please note that I included links to all these disaster related websites for those of you who will need them. Although I have a feeling that the people who need it the most don't have Internet access at the moment.

Ike Update #5

Here are some the photos I have taken of this situation. I haven't had a chance to go through and orient them yet, but at least you can view them. Believe it or not I have about 150 more I have yet to get up. Our laptop broke, so we have to go to Best Buy to have them retrieve the hard drive.

Hurricane Ike photos on Flickr

We went to our house yesterday and there is no serious damage. Most of our gutters blew off and a shutter blew off. Nothing we can't handle. The water coming out of the faucet smells like sewage and there was still no power. We decided to properly evacuate to northwest Texas where there is electricity and gas and grocery stores. We plan to stay here until either power comes back on at our house or one of us gets called back to work. Since I work ON Galveston Island, it may be awhile for me. No idea on when Travis will get called back to work. Depends on when the plant gets power again I guess. Our neighbor from across the street, Cowboy Willy, has gone back home and said he will call us when power returns.

For those of you who know me and my friends well, here is an update on them:

We went to Shannon and Chris' house too and it doesn't appear to have any serious damage either. Their backyard is still flooded though. They are both still north of Houston, but plan to drive home today to clean out their fridge (kicking myself for not doing that when we were home).

JR, Sara, Logan and Dana all went to their parent's houses.

Jenna has gone back home and she has power now. She has flooding in her first floor and her entire fence is gone. Her husband Seth is stuck working in Galveston right now.

Kai appears to have power on and off at his house. No damage to his home.

Chris and Alexa are still in Colorado, but will be back as soon as the airports open back up. No word on their house yet, but we know there was serious flooding in their area.

Rachel and Scott evacuated to Dallas before the storm. Scott has been called back to help clean up at our work in Galveston. Rachel is debating flying back to Chicago since it will be a long time before she can get to her home.

Travis went to pick up Ariel and Robert from the airport near here. They were in west Texas this whole time and can't fly back into Houston until the airports open back up. Since they live in Galveston, it will be a while before they can get home so they will be staying with us.

I am permanently exhausted. Must eat. Then maybe I will get back here when I have a clear mind.

Ike Update #4

Wow. So. Don't even really know where to start here. I don't think I'll be able to get this all in at one time. At least not without stopping to go charge the computer again. We still don't have power, we're running on the generator at this point. The news has been saying it could be anywhere from one to three weeks before power comes back. Also - everyone I know is alive and well.

Everything seemed fine until about 10 or so last night. It got really windy and started raining so we all moved into the house to watch a movie. I was happy when the power went out because it meant we could stop watching Rambo. Bad movie. I don't recommend it. Not the point... Everything went off at 11:30pm. I stayed up until midnight before I was so tired I couldn't stand it. I went to bed then, but was woken at 3 in the morning by the wind blowing outside. It scared the bageezes out of me so I got up to see where everyone was. I found JR, Sara and Travis hanging out on the covered front porch. I went out to find that several trees in the area had already fallen across the street and a little in Jacen's yard. Here's the best of what I can show you a Category 2 hurricane looks like:

I stayed up for about an hour before I couldn't take it anymore and went back to bed. It was too stressful to stay up and watch. At least while I was sober. When we got up in the morning we went out the front door to assess the damage. Thank goodness we didn't stay out on that porch because look what we found (this is why we put plywood on the windows):

We walked around the neighborhood in the rain to see how the neighborhood made out. There is so much damage I can't even begin to explain to you. It is mostly trees and fences and carports, so nothing TOO serious. The craziest thing is the woman across the street lost 5 trees in her yard alone. The biggest one being a giant pine that landed in the road. Thankfully, we can still get out the other way. We had to move a bunch of small branches out of the road, but it wasn't bad.

My sentiments exactly:





It amazes me how people band together in a time of need. Travis had the chain saw out and was cutting through the branches in the front porch, when a bunch of the neighbors came over and helped us pull the pieces to the street. When we were finished with that, we went across the street to help a couple get a tree out of their driveway:

We do have the TV hooked up to the generator, but I think we all have a little bit of cabin fever. We couldn't help staying outside. Dana, Sara and I decided to take a walk down to Brais Bayou to see how high it was. I looks to be half full right now, which is still significant, but you could see where the leaf debris was and it was about to fill up and over the banks. We were only a few blocks from Dana's apartment by that point so we decided to keep walking to her place. It was a disaster. I'm pretty sure that every single tree in that apartment complex is down. Including the one next to Dana's apartment. The roots from the tree pulled up the fence and the concrete slab of her patio:

Ugh, more later. I'm tired and it is HOT. Plus everyone keeps calling and texting me. Oh and by the way, no electricity makes for cold showers.

Ike Update #3

No rain yet - just severe wind gusts. We've seen a few areas we know that have some serious flooding. Our old apartment, Ariel's current apartment, a restaurant we go to all the time, a restaurant our friends go to for breakfast. JR just ran to the store and he witnessed three transformers blowing. We heard them from the house. The power is out on the next street over now. I expect the power will go soon, so this may be my last post until after the storm. AH!

The dogs are hanging out outside for now, before the rain starts. You can see the landlord came by and boarded up all the windows at Jacen's house.

We all decided to do shots each time a newscaster says "hunker down". LOL!


You can sort of get a feel for what's going on here now. It's very exciting. The cicadas are going NUTS.

Ike Update #2

The insurance company had an automatic message left on my voicemail this morning. They gave us a number to call if we need to make a claim when we get back. =( I called my auto insurance to make sure our vehicles are covered if they get flooded. They are. Phew. I think JR, Sara, Logan and Dana are coming to the house we are staying at since it's at a higher elevation and we have a generator. We plan to eat dinner a little early in case the power goes out. We need to be conservative about how much we use the generator.

So, here's a list of things I wish we had brought from home:

• More magazines or books
• A battery powered radio (Dana may have one for us to borrow)
• Our checkbook
• The paperwork for our home
• Music CD's
• Photo albums
• Callaway's kennel

Hindsight...