Obviously, with Katrina so fresh in everyone’s mind, hearing about a tropical storm entering the Caribbean raised an alert. Then when it started growing so fast and looked to be heading toward Galveston, barely controlled chaos erupted.
In fact, when they first started projecting the path to Galveston and Houston, I begged my husband to evacuate. I was terrified. I live near Pinehurst, Texas (Montgomery County), which I figure is approximately 70-80 miles (as the crow flies) from the Galveston coast. We’re expecting hurricane force winds, even this far north. More than anything, it’s the wind that scares me, as does the immensely increased chance of tornadoes. I truly don’t know why, but I have a deep-seated fear of tornadoes. Best I can remember, I’ve never been through one, so I have no idea why I have such a strong and irrational reaction. But I have nightmares about them all the time, and whenever a strong storm kicks up I get panicky.
Well, Nathan convinced me to stay and ride it out. My instinct for flight is far outweighed by my instinct to keep my family together. We’re not the best at planning, so we didn’t have water stockpiled, just waiting in our pantry for such an occasion. To top it off, both of us have been sick, so I hadn’t been watching TV or the news until Tuesday night. By the time my mom called on Tuesday night to tell us to get water, the stores were stripped. I was able to find 8 20-ounce bottles of Ozarka at Klein’s, and that was only because they were in the refrigerated juice section. Most people didn’t think to look there, I suppose.
Continue reading ‘Preparing for the storm’
I can’t help but jump on the blogging bandwagon! I always laugh at the hype of the news. Every time there’s the smallest blip on the radar, we’re suddenly thrust into STORM WATCH mode. Of course, Rita is a wee bit more than a blip on the radar. But in homage to the many nail-biting STORM WATCH sessions of years gone by, I dub this category: RITA WATCH.
Of course, parts of this Rita Watch story aren’t so funny. It takes me 40 to 50 minutes to get home on a bad traffic day. It took me 2 hours today! We just saw a newscast on how it has taken drivers 6 hours to make what is normally (maybe) a 1 hour trip. As I said before, even if we had a place to go, we couldn’t get out now!
My mom called a little while ago to tell me that they had found a place to gas up her car (amazingly only at $2.79 per gallon!), and she finally found a place that had cases of Ozarka water. For 15 bucks! So, a pox on you, Shell in Magnolia, for trying to take advantage of people that way! Grrrr… that makes my blood boil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Free market, businesses exist to make as much profit as possible, yada, yada, yada. That doesn’t make it right.
I just got an email from Travelocity titled “A few reasons to book your trip to Portland now.” They tell me it’s because Portland is a beautiful city. But my first thought in response to the subject line was, “Ummm… Rita?” Add to that the fact that my Portland buddy just got through chastising me for living in hurricane country, and the timing of the message just felt creepy! 
We live near Tomball, north of Houston, and we’ve decided to stay through the storm. Heck, even if we were going to get out, I’m not sure we could. Not sure where we’d go or if we’d be safe getting there. One coworker said they had to call places in Arkansas to find a motel room. AAA Texas is advising members that they’ll have to drive at least to Oklahoma.
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