The Christmas season in Fort Lauderdale

ok, so I've raised my ice glass to the end of hurricane season. Now another season has hit us in Fort Lauderdale.. The holiday season.

Coconuts roasting over your open charcoal grill on the beach.
Icicle lights wrapped around your 20 foot palm tree.
Inflatable snowmen leaning on your grass that needs to be cut.

These are some of the sights that welcome us in south Florida. Ok, well maybe not the coconuts on the grill, but we don't have chestnuts down here.

Holiday movies have givin the world the idea that it must snow for Christmas. And since there hasn't been snow in Fort Lauderdale since 1978, we must make up for it in lights.

Ahh, the end of a season

As the jolly elves and the green grinch loom over the horizon, I have another reason to celebrate. Today is the end of the 2005 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season.

Yeah.

And that's about as loud a cheer as you will hear from me...That's about all the energy I have left.

As the world enters this season of holiday cheer and mass market insanity, I spend the day looking out at blue tarp roofs, battered fences and leaning power poles. I think my holiday season came early this year. I have my house, my power is on, my phone is working, and wonder of wonders - I can flush my toilet without lugging in the water. This I celebrate and give many thanks.

I'm here, my animals are here, and my friends are here. What other Christmas presents do I need?

I think people on the east coast and the gulf of Mexico need to create a new holiday, the "We've survived another season" year. Even with Tropical storm epsilon out there (yes, I'm getting really good at the Greek alphabet), we need to have a party. What I would suggest is a time where all peoples in the hurricane belt raise their ice water glasses and sigh "it's over for this year".

*clink*
Sigh. It's over for this year

Please don't forget us, the little people...

At last, the quest has been finished. My house is now complete. Sort of. Anyway, at 9 this Saturday morning, my phone line was reinstalled at my house. One month after Wilma.
huzzah!

So now what? The water's back, the power's on, and the phone is now in working order. I just can't seem to get my life back in the pre-Wilma stages. When I go to make a phone call, still grab for my cell phone, not the one sitting next to me on my desk.

More often than not, I still walk around the house without any lights on. I forget that I have power, and don't need to stub my toes all the time.

Don't even get me started about water rationing.
I'm wondering, is it just me? Am I the only one still trying to get out of the Hurricane aftermath?

Oh, please don't get me wrong. In the scale of "bad things that can happen to you and your home", this only rates a 4 or a 5 on a ten point scale. The main structure is intact. I can live here. My basic life "stuffs" (including all the crap in the office closet I REALLY need to get rid of) is still here an ok. On that point I know I am truly blessed by (please insert whatever deity, spirit or whatever entity you wish to use or not use) that I have all my fingers and toes, animals, job and the like.

But please don't forget about us. The "we're not homeless, we just have a lot of work cut out for us" people. I think they're a lot of us out here after Wilma. We're teetering on the brink of normalcy, living our lives with just a twist of angst. The stress in our lives doesn't make the 5 o'clock news, let alone the national broadcasts.

Wilma was a flash in the pan compared to Katrina in the war of words and TV. In this summer of Greek named storms, Wilma will be the asterisk on the hurricane center archives. Except for those of us who live through her, Wilma will not exist in the hive mind of the world. She wasn't an Andrew (been there, done that) or a Katrina, but that doesn't matter to the people that have lived through her. Like Charlie last year, she beat the crud out of a localized area.

So people in other parts of this country say, "why the heck do you live in hurricane alley?"
My response has never been "the weather". Yes, we have great winters, and so does the southwest. I live here, because of one thing: my work. If they had an electron microscope and the lab to use and maintain it in Maine, I would be there in a heartbeat. But they don't. So I'm here in hurricane alley.

People in other sections of the country have to deal with natural disasters as well. The west has earthquakes, the Midwest has tornados, the northeast has blizzards. All can kill. All can destroy.

At least with hurricanes, I can see them coming for days and prep for them. I won't freeze without power.

So I plug on, hoping that one day soon I can feel that "normal" person again.

Maybe next year. That's my New Year's resolution. I'm going to be normal next year.

stress, oh the things that it will do

ok, so we have started week four post Wilma. The water is finally in the house and running, the power is up (sort of.. more on that later), and the phone line is off the ground, but not working. So you think everything's back to normal right? Wrong.

Monday on the way to work, stress finally caused an overload. 2 words. Kidney Stone. ouch. yup. Ouch. My mom has had a couple, and she said that she's rather give birth again without anesthetic than pass another kidney stone.

So I go and do the right thing, I head to the emergency room in blinding pain. And guess what? They lost me. Oh sure I was sitting in the ER waiting room, but apparently major, MAJOR pain does not qualify as an emergency. 9 hours. I spent 9 hours waiting. I passed the stone IN the waiting room . After that, I started to feel better, and announced that I was leaving, as I had passed the stone and they couldn't do anything for me now. They said I couldn't leave. They said that they called my name twice. Funny. I was sitting right next to where they call people, and I didn't hear MY name. Amazing CYA techniques. So at 8pm, they finally called my name (I entered the ER at 10:30am). They move me to a room, and I wait again. Then the doctor comes in, says, Yep, probably was a kidney stone, but JUST to make sure, hang around and we will give you a CT scan.

So to make a long day longer, I got home at 2:30 in the morning. I feel proud. I managed to help them find an Alzheimer's patient that they lost AND went through 3 shifts of nurses.

Remember that power thing at the beginning of this post? Well, when I got home at 2:30 in the blessed AM, I found that all my appliances were powerless. No 220 was coming into the house. So, no fridge, hot water heater, washer/dryer, a/c or stove. I had light, but that was it.

Ok, so the people from up north are going.. no a/c? It's November! Well, that night it was 79 with 60% humidity. I could have used a little coolness.

I stayed home the next day, and spent it struggling with a weak cellphone signal to contact FPL about the power issue.

It turns out that my house wiring is a little funky. My bathroom lights and bedroom ceiling fan are on the same circuit as my hot water heater. So, being the good scientist, I used the fan as power indicator.

When the power was on full, the fan ran normally. In brown out conditions, it ran in chariots of fire mode. All day as I lay in bed waiting for the stone twinges to end, I watched the fan do its own strange dance. A slow waltz comes to mind.

At midnight I gave up of FPL ever coming to my rescue. But wonder or wonders! at 1am an FPL truck, and a lovely FPL worker found out that my post hurricane connection wasn't quite connected, and he Fixed it for me!

So the water's on, the power's back up. Just a need for a phone. eh. at least I have a house.
So for stress, I recommend lots and lots of water. Don't get yourselves trapped in an ER with a kidney stone.

whoops, things they need addition

ok, I guess I am competing against Letterman.

10. Condoms. After all, Florida had a drastic increase in the birth rate after 4 hurricanes last year. Then we were only out of power for a week! I would strongly recommend that if you are planning nookie for the next post hurricane power outage, the Costco extra large trojan variety pack is for you.

Things they should add to the hurricane preparedness lists

Things they should add to the hurricane preparedness lists


In this 3 weeks after hurricane Wilma, I’ve come to realize that the “are you prepared?” hurricane lists given out at every store in Florida is missing some items. Things that most people wouldn’t realize as a necessity until you’ve been through a storm. As I sit here in my powerless, waterless, and phoneless house, I’ve had a great deal of time to think of these very basic, but very necessary items.

Earplugs. After just two nights of hearing seven generators grumbling around my neighborhood, earplugs have become a major item. I know some people can sleep through anything, but I dare them to sleep with a generator gagging on its last bit of gas, or trying to run three lamps, stove, TV and Xbox all at the same time. Cats having a hairball sound less painful. When I finally remembered my little foam earplugs from work, and the wonders of silence far outweigh the itchiness of in my ears.
GaxEx. Has anyone ever looked at what we eat during and after a hurricane? Chips of all kinds, beans, soda, beer..junk food of all sorts. It gives us another whole reason to get the shutters off the windows. If we could harness all the methane released in a hurricane zone, we could light up Manhattan for weeks!
Doggy treats. With all the fences down in the neighborhood, there are a lot of dogs cruising the street. Most have just noticed that their prison walls have blown away, and they want to see what’s on the other side. The big monsters I avoid, but the treats have helped me leash a couple of small poodles and a corgi for the walk home.
Bike helmets. In the past six days I have seen more kids on scooters, bicycles and rollerblades in my neighborhood than I have in eight years. None of them in a helmet. Two or three kids on a scooter blasting down the street as fast as they can go, dodging tree limbs, roofing tiles, and fallen power lines. Enough said.
Water hose. If it wasn’t for my water hose and my next door neighbor, I would be in serious trouble. One of my trees ripped up my waterline, leaving my house high and dry. Luckily, I have a very nice neighbor that let me hook into her water supply. My best workouts have been hauling the 5 gallon bucket to my bathroom for flushing. I will celebrate the day of the bucket free flush.
Blue tarps. Ok, these are on the list, but I’ve found they work for another reason completely. When Wilma took out my water, it also took out all of my trees. I have the hose from my neighbor, but no privacy for a nice wash down. A little blue tarp, some fencing posts, zip ties and concrete blocks, and voila! My own outdoor shower. And people pay thousands of dollars for such a luxury.
Clean clothes. My brother laughed when I told him that the day before Wilma hit I would be all my laundry. Now that it looks like I won’t be getting power for the next week, now who has the last laugh!?
Digital camera. I know, I know, any cheap camera will do to document the damage done to our homes. However, with a digital camera, you can document all the insanity in your neighborhood (for example, using a 4x4 pickup truck to bring down a 30 foot pine tree without using a chainsaw) and quickly email it to all your friends and relatives. That is, as soon as you get an internet connection.
Hair holders. Even if you don’t have any hair, elastic hair holders are the wave of the future, or at least the saving grace for all vertical blinds. I’ve used me hair holders to keep my blinds together, so they won’t break off in the wind coming through my open windows. You can color coordinate if you like. Mine are in blue and teal.

Well, I’m not David Letterman, so I don’t have to have a top 10. I just think that these nine are ready to join the list of requirements in all the stores for next year’s hurricane season. May we never have to use them.