Waiting on Locust

Flippity Flip.

There is a hurricane coming our directly towards all four of our houses.

Listen, this Jersey girl lives in Jersey for a reason, and I deal with all negatives that come with living in the Garden State by all the counter balance positives. I like the beach, hate extreme weather, the great soil and love myself a good mall. In 2011 I've dealt with Blizzards, 115 Degree Heat Indexes, my first Earthquake and now Irene is threatening to storm herself through almost everyone I love.

And that my friends, scares the beejebus outta me.

The only thing I am really, incredibly, extremely grateful for is the warning time. We have about two days to mobilize and prepare; to set plans in motion and evacuate as needed. I'll take it. Two days seems like a luxurious amount of time compared to the minutes Joplin, MO had for the tornado that caused such unimaginable devastation earlier this year.

Last night after a long and stressful day at work, Pete and I hit up the grocery store and headed right over to the other house to prep as much as possible for Irene. We closed and locked all the windows, nailing some of the worse ones into the house. All the debris around the yard was pulled inside, things like picnic tables, scaffolding and the lawnmower got stashed in the safest place possible. All of Pete's tools got moved off of the garage floor, we put a lot of them inside the beastly '72 Land Cruiser. We also broke out the hammer and nailed up lots of extra supports for the front of the garage.

I am nervous as hell about how the garage is going to handle this hurricane. At least I can rest easy in knowing it was built to code and then some, all thanks to my Dad and his insistence in building quality construction. And all the hurricane straps are nailed in like woah. So, that is some relief.

Inside the house I tapped up a few windows and moved anything "valuable" into the center of the house. Hoping that if we get some blown out windows that things shouldn't get sucked out or ruined when the rain gets driven in.

We also grabbed our two chainsaws and gassed them up. They'll stay with us during the storm in case clean up is needed afterwards.

Tonight and tomorrow is prep for our house. Not going to lie, it makes me a little sick to my stomach thinking about everything that has to get done...

Please stay safe through the storm everyone. I know our homes are important to us, but nothing is like the people and pets who live inside of them.

xo, Eva