Monday, August 27, 2012

Hurricanes

I'd hate being in in the path of Hurricane Isaac! I feel for anyone that has had to evacuate!

 It's kind of odd hearing "Isaak's" name on the news. Even if it's spelled different.

Once upon a time I lived in Savannah, Georgia. I went to grad school there. I was told to evacuate in 1999 for Hurricane Floyd. I had NO CLUE what to expect or what to do. I was from Omaha, Nebraska. Smack dab in the middle of the US we do not have hurricanes to worry about. My friend Lisa who was from Ohio drove us to Macon, Georgia. What should have taken only a few hours, took ALL DAY to get there.

There were no exits. They were all blocked off. I had to go potty super bad and Lisa refused to pull over. Owners were letting their pets get out to go potty, but no not me. She was worried that if we pulled over, we'd get a nail in a tire, and never get anywhere. I crossed my legs and nearly peed my pants. I so wished I had one of those adult diapers on. I seriously would have peed my pants in relief. I had to go that bad!

We got to a shelter. It was busy. We were so unprepared. On the news they said to travel light. Well we did just that. Most people had blow up mattresses, blankets and more. We had suitcases full of clothes and that was pretty much it. Master students we were but we were dumb when it came to hurricanes.

A family took our sorry asses in. Me, the Queen of Allergies got to stay in a house full of cats. They were true southern folks. The cooking was all fried. Not fried in Olive Oil like I'm used to. NOPE fried in true grease. I'm used to the already cooked bacon. Even then I wipe all the extra grease with a paper towel. I don't even have that often. We had fried bacon, fried chicken, fried hush puppies...Not only was I snotting from allergies, my stomach sounded like a hurricane was forming inside.

I tried being grateful for the stay. I really did. It was so hard being so miserable and staying chipper about their hospitality.

We did have a fun night playing games.

We were in the sticks. There was no where to go other than where we were at.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse I sat down at the table. Their little girl was about 5 or 6. she started going on and on about how her mom had been combing bugs out of her hair.

The next day we were free to go home.

I sped. I'll admit it, I was in a hurry to get back to my apartment. I think everyone else was ready to be home to. They sped past me.

I got back. We had no power. Leaves were everywhere. The first thing I did when a store opened up, was buy lice shampoo and I proceeded to wash my hair. It was bug free!

I wrote my thank you letter to the family and we never heard from them again.

Have you ever had to evacuate? 

3 comments:

~ Noelle said...

Girl...
I hate that you had such a bad time, it makes us Georgia people sound bad... We aren't ALL about fried foods... although fried chicken is good FROM TIME TO TIME...
LOL, love the lice story, just hearing/reading it makes me itch...and to talk about it at the table? NASTY...

As far as evacuating, we had the flood of 1994 (google ALBANY GEORGIA FLOOD OF 1994 to see/read about it) but we were okay, our friends/ family... not so much..
hope this storm isn't that bad, as we have family in New Orleans...

jayedee said...

oh heck yes, we evac. i, in my infinite wisdom, insisted that we build this house on stilts so i could house the horses underneath and not have to build a barn. consequently, we head to the shelter every time we get a bad blow.

we've been under mandatory evac for wildfires a few years back too...THAT was interesting....i had to crate up every critter on the place and take them with us! no way was i leaving anyone behind!

i'm still shivering at the mention of head lice *insert head itching here* our elementary schools seem to have an epidemic every year...i was so relieved when we started homeshooling.... we never had lice again!

Eat To Live said...

We were on vacation in Biloxi and had to run like little girls to get north before everyone else left.

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