We Made It!!

/ Marcia Meara

hurricanetea
Hurricane Tea Coming Up

Sat through some wicked high winds and driving rain, and even some hail at one point, which I’ve never seen during a hurricane before, but our house is still standing, and no trees fell over! HUGE blessing. Power was off for 26 hours, but as soon as the worst winds were gone, Mark hooked up the generator, and it ran like a champ. We were able to connect the fridge, the small a/c unit in the bedroom, my CPAP machine (so I could sleep),  a few lamps, chargers for our devices, and whatever else we needed at any given moment.

We bought the generator right after Charley came through in 2004, and it was the best $500 I’ve ever spent. At least we were comfortable as we watched the storm. Our biggest damage was that the 15′ security light pole that was attached to our shed was ripped loose. It was a huge wooden beam as thick and solid as a railroad tie, and it had withstood four other hurricanes. Now it’s laying across my garden, but it didn’t damage a thing as it fell, missing a huge (unmovable) ceramic planter by an inch.  That was a pricey pot that I would have hated to lose, but we couldn’t bring it in, and happily, even it was spared.

There were a few times when I was pretty sure the roof would get ripped off, and it has definitely sustained some damage. We’ll probably have to replace it SOON, as there’s some evidence of leakage. But overall, we were truly lucky.

We have a massive cleanup ahead of us, though. The yard is buried in branches and bamboo stems that were stripped from the canes, piles of Spanish moss, and various other clutter. It has essentially become a rather challenging obstacle course for the dachshunds, who pretty much have to get a running start to clear even the smallest of  twigs!

Bottom line, I won’t be officially “back” for another couple of days, as we finish the clean up, but I’ll be keeping an eye on things here. And as soon as I possibly can, I will “re-open” #ExcerptWeek, and get the rest of the submissions posted. Bear with me a little longer, if you will. Thanks!

And I hope the rest of you who were in the path of this wretched storm are safe, too. Gerald? Don? Kass? Anyone? Let us hear from you if you can.

 

46 thoughts on “We Made It!!”

    • Thanks, Viv. It was that last little veer to the east that saved us from the worst of it. Getting ready to head outside for clean up now. Supposed to be nearly 90 today, so we’ll be feeling the heat while we work. 😦

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  5. Thank goodness you made it through and both you and your home are safe. We were suppose to get a direct hit as I live in Broward County, boy did we dodge a big bullet. It rained and was a bit windy but that was about it. I am praying for the people up north of us that Matthew does not cause any deaths. Keep safe and I will visit again. :o)

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    • Thanks so much. Yeah, it came ashore farther north than was predicted, which saved you guys, and it veered very slightly east at the last minute, which saved us. Hurricanes. They do whatever they want! 😯 Glad you’re okay, and things will be getting back to normal here on TWS, as soon as we finish the cleanup. 🙂

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    • Working like crazy again. Work, work, work to get READY for the storm, then work, work, work to clean up after. The curbside pile of debris is climbing higher and higher! Thanks, Olga!

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    • Thanks, Mary. Our peak hurricane season is summer, though it extends to November. But I don’t think we’ve ever had a cool weather hurricane in my lifetime. You lose power, you suffer from extreme muggy, steamy heat. Won’t know about Erin’s house for awhile, yet, but at least they’re having fun at the beach, out paddleboarding with Kaelen. 🙂 My son’s area escaped almost all of the storm. Just some heavy rain and a bit of wind, about on part with a typical summer thunderstorm. Yay!

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    • I hope you never have any like this. I’m thanking my lucky stars it veered slight east at the last minute. Even Daytona isn’t as bad as we feared. Had it not moved that little bit, there would be very little left standing, I suspect. No homes for all those people to come back to. 😯

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  14. Marcia, I am so glad I stopped by today. I started reading “A Boy Named Rabbit”. I am hooked and just ordered it for my Kindle. I must finish it today.
    I had the worst virus during Hurricane Matthew and was down and out. Today I am feeling much better and decided to sift through my email and there you were. A perfect day for me to read. To heck with other things that I should be doing, including a host of other books stored in my Kindle. I want to read your wonderful story.
    I hope all is going smoothly with your clean up and it goes quickly.

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    • Thanks so much! I’m very glad you are enjoying Rabbit. It can be read as a standalone, but it’s much more fun if you’ve read Book 1, so you understand what Mac and Sarah had already been through before Rabbit showed up. Either way, I’ll be interested to know what you think when you’ve finished! Rabbit has turned into a pretty special little boy, and Book 3 in the series, Harbinger, is out, too.

      Glad you are feeling better, and can enjoy some reading today. 🙂

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  15. Glad the impact on you was minimal! We didn’t get all that much here in Gainesville. It was like a prolonged thunderstorm, without the lightning. Didn’t even lose power, which amazed me! Don’t work too hard as you clean up. Take lots of breaks. It’s easy to overdo (kind of the southern equivalent of shoveling snow).

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    • That’s what my son said, Kass. He lost power for about 2 minutes. But otherwise, it wasn’t much worse than a typical summer thunderstorm. So glad you guys didn’t get it. We had MUCH worse than that, but in comparison to the coast, we’re good. And even the coast came out better than they feared, thankfully.

      Yeah, it’s plenty hot out there today, so Mark is doing most of the outside work, and I’m packing away hurricane gear, doing laundry, and sweeping up the 10,000 leaves that managed to get tracked inside during the long day, yesterday.

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  16. Glad to hear all is well. We were fine here in DeLand. After losing our power twice during the 2004 hurricanes, I was expecting the same. But no, we never lost power, which meant that we could spend the day in comfort watching the tress sway (and not topple over, thank goodness). I’m happy it’s over and that we have a gorgeous day today!

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  20. Thank heavens! Having survived vicious hailstorms that destroyed everything, I can’t begin to imagine what surviving a hurricane would be like. Glad you’re okay, Marcia. 🙂

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  21. Glad to hear all is well Marcia. Our storms and floods can do some damage, but I love being cosy in bed and hopefully safe when our South Westerlies are lashing the bedroom window It’s hard to imagine hurricanes on your scale. My WIP starts on the night of our 2014 Valentine’s Night Storm when many of our beach huts were smashed to matchsticks. Have you written about hurricanes in any of your novels?

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  22. Glad to hear you weathered the storm OK. Here in Orlando we just had small branches come down. No trees – which was a blessing. Also the power wasn’t out long. The only problem was I was bored to tears sitting inside all that time! Hope your clean up goes smoothly and is over quickly. Take care!

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  23. So glad to hear you made it though unscathed. It does sound like you’ve got some major clean-up but considering what could have happened that’s a blessing. Generators are wonderful. We’ve had to use ours in the flip season of winter when snow and ice storms knock the power out. Twenty-six hours without power is mind-boggling. Thanks for checking in and letting us know you’re okay. I hope Erin was fine in Georgia, too. Hugs to you!

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  25. So glad to hear Marsh, you’re okay and minimal damage. I left you comments on other posts and emailed you. I know you must have lots of catching up to do so just know I was thinking and praying for you. ❤

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    • No computer access for more than 24 hours, and very limited time to get back to folks, now that I’m connected again. Sorry, Deb. And for some reason, RoadRunner has decided (after 15 years, to delete my emails as soon as they send them out. So I can no longer go to their site later and find them. So if my computer is off, when I turn it on, I will only get whatever happens to be in the RR Inbox at that very moment. Usually only 5 or 6 emails, even if there are 200 on my iPhone. It makes keeping up very tricky, and means I can no longer turn off my computer, EVER, without losing mail. 😦 Long telephone coversations with them have proved fruitless. They try to tell me it’s the fault of my email client, but I’ve used the same one for the entire time I’ve been online, and it has always worked fine.

      Bottom line is, I probably never received any personal emails from you, and I’m just behind on the ones here. I WILL try to catch up tomorrow, as we’ve reached a point in cleanup where we can slow down a bit. Life should start going back to normal, though I have a business meeting, a doctor’s appointment, and funeral to go to this week, so I’ll be out more than usual. But hopefully, I can dig out from under.

      Thanks for the well wishes, and I appreciate your reaching out to me. Sorry I missed it, and sorry to be so far behind, here. I am very grateful for your concern and will be emailing you soon. IF I don’t lose power again. There are still some homes in the area without, and some folks have been getting short term power failures off and on, as things come back online.

      Can’t wait for this to all be HISTORY! 🙂 ❤

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      • Thanks for updating me. Don’t be sorry. I know shyte was happening. But sheesh, why not change to gmail so you don’t have to worry about losing emails? No worries. I’m going to fish it out of my sent box and resend LOL – the beauty of gmail! Just glad you’re okay. That was great that FB let you post your status ‘SAFE’! xo 🙂

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        • Lots of reasons I don’t want to change, not the least of which is I’ve been doing business with this same email for the entire 15 years. I would hate to have to change my email after all this time. My art/painting business, my eBay business, and now my writing are all under it. AND I think RoadRunner needs to fix the problem and stop blaming it on me. If I HAVE to, I’ll stop using IncrediMail as my email client and switch to Outlook. I like my mail delivered to my computer, and I hate going to the site to read it, so I don’t want to use anything where I change the addy OR have to check my email on their website. But as long as I don’t turn my computer off, I get my mail delivered to it, directly, the same as it comes to my phone. And as I say, believe it or not, I have a LOT of folks who mail me regularly and know me from other businesses and other groups/bulletin boards. I’ll figure out something someday.

          Facebook’s totally unrelated to my email client. And I did post after the storm on both my personal FB and my author FB pages, immediately. It wasn’t until I got a request to post on their status page that I did that. Thanks for resending the email. I’m hoping to catch up with it all tomorrow. 🙂 This past week was just an awful mess, and I’m only barely digging my head out of the hurricane debris and taking a look around now. 😀

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          • Aha, ok, now I get you. Wow, I used incredimail yearssssssss ago and had to let go because it was giving my computer huge headaches. And I’m with you, I wish I didn’t have to sign in somewhere for my mail but that’s what technology has created. The best was Windows live hotmail, but of course the greed giants, ruiners of any system below Windows 10 and now even Outlook has changed for the worse. I used to avoid gmail thinking it was more complicated, but not anymore :(. Whatever works keep doing it! 🙂
            Dig slowly my friend, we’re all here, nobody’s going anywhere. ❤

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            • I have Outlook on my computer. It came with Microsoft Office when I bought this one a few years ago. I’ve never set it up, but have been thinking about doing so, because IncrediMail is SLOW. Now I’m wondering if Outlook will install as it arrived, or if it will force me to update to what you are saying is a changed version. ??

              Using Outlook rather than IncrediMail wouldn’t necessitate an email address change. That was my ace in the hole, for when I finally gave up on IncrediMail, but maybe it’s already too late? (I used to belong to several stationery groups, years ago, and I made and shared TONS of IncrediMail stationery, but now, no one can see it any more, so I don’t use those IM stationeries. I do use the graphics and special emoticons, and stuff, which I’d hate to give up, but I could save them to a folder, and manually insert them, if I really wanted to.

              Not sure what I’ll do about it in the long run, but for now, I have other, more pressing matters to attend to, so I’m postponing this one for another day. 🙂

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              • I don’t blame you for postponing, but when you get the inclination, try setting up a password and signing into Outlook (no other choice) and it should offer you to import all your contacts and emails from your other server. Ya, I don’t like the layout and functions, but they got us by the you know whats! 😦 xo

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