Twelve hours of Hurricane Maria – the day

I’m writing this in my car, where I will sleep tonight. We’ll get to that reason later …

Today is Tuesday. Hurricane Maria hit last Wednesday and it feels like a month ago. Hurricane Irma, last year.

A week and a half after we arrived back from Georgia during hurricane Irma, the island was directly hit by a much larger category five hurricane. By the time everyone figured out that this was going to be a bitch, every single airplane was jampacked and sold out. We were stuck and destined to experience a hurricane first hand.

Tuesday night before the hurricane, the kids hunkered down on our bedroom floor on inflatable mattresses. Rumors surfaced that our power would simply be cut off at 6pm Tuesday, but we had until 1am to enjoy our A/C. It was generator time till morning. (It was SO muggy out)

We brought in the last few items from outside and sat looking out the windows. And sat. And watched the wind. It was exciting!

For the first four hours.

I couldn’t believe this bird clung onto this branch as long as it did. I wanted to scoop it up and perch it on our porch lamp.

The eye was supposed to pass the closest to us around 1pm, but we could tell by the shift of the wind it passed a bit earlier.

Every wander around the house showed us new branches that were downed. Our neighbor’s tree leaned into our yard.

A few houses down a trampoline flipped over the house from the back yard and landed in the front. Neighbors from the surrounding houses ran out in the storm to tie down the trampoline before it did more damage, even resorting to cutting it with a knife so it wouldn’t relaunch.

Our balcony was flooding! Too much debris was clogging our drains, so Trevor ran outside to clear them several times before the accumulated lake spilled into our bedroom. The branch slapped him once

So…we later learned that Mayaguez received 100-120 wind speeds. Are we horrible parents? We never got in the closet. And I had hung up pretty Christmas lights and everything. Our earphones sat untouched. We sat in front of patio doors and I took selfies near the end. I’m as stupid as those meteorologists who report outside and get blown away haha

After eight hours of watching the world blow by, we got bored. We made Lego hurricane hunter airplanes. We played doctor and looked at X-rays on our lanterns. We watched out the window some more. I got my 10,000 steps in walking around the house. I imagined all my friends squirreling in their homes. I took a nap. I started reading Harry Potter book one (for the ninth time)

We ate crap food. You know how you’re supposed to shop around the parameter of the grocery store to get the healthy foods? Hurricane foods are all in the middle. I had too much adrenaline and my kids knew I had Fruit Loops and wonder bread so well, we all had the ‘hurricane munchies’.

Oh and the water went out too.

The kids slept on our floor again so we could just run the most efficient air conditioner on the generator. Believe it or not, our TV still received SD channels and I watched the Master Chef finale!

My feelings from the day were a mix of odd excitement, adrenaline, fatigue, and a realization that the real trial was not the storm itself, but the aftermath we were about to face.