The Hurricane - A Catalog (part 1)

This is what I've been calling my Catalog of the events surrounding the freak storm that Cincinnati experienced this last week. AS A WORD OF WARNING: This is long, long, long, and very detailed. I wouldn't read it if I were you (unless you happen to be my Dad (who cares what I write even if it's unimportant) or someone who likes to read over-detailed and semi-boring information or someone who just has too much time on their hands). I'll probably post something later, in an update I'll write up later, that will be short and to the point. Like a sum-up. This Catalog is more of a writing exercise. It's not clean or polished, but it was fun to write and to document all the fascinating things happening during this last week.

So, if you dare, read on. (But seriously. This is only Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and already this is 9 pages in Word, single-spaced.) You've been warned.

Saturday, Sept. 13, T – 1
6:00 p.m. Skies are overcast, but no storm can be seen on the horizon. Rob and I are on a date at a church function. It is hot—about 95 degrees F—and fans are running to keep us cool outside. It’s not working, though—it’s still hot. I thought we’d be inside, so I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt that I rolled to my elbows.
A friend mentions, almost in passing, that right now in Texas they’re being hit hard by Ike. She continues, “We want to move somewhere when we retire, but where? The east coast has hurricanes. The west coast: earthquakes.” Someone else interjects, “California’s going to fall into the ocean.” And another person, “Not just California: Nevada, too. Utah will be beach-front property!” We all chuckle about that. The original speaker continues, “The Great Plains have tornados. The South is too humid. The Mountain West is too dry. So we’ll have to stay within a 3-state area: Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky.”

Sunday, Sept. 14, T
1:15 p.m. I’m gathering my three children from the church hallways. While herding them to the front lobby, I look outside. The trees are going crazy! I casually comment to someone sitting on the couch, “Woah. If I go outside I’ll be blown away!” Out in the parking lot I stop to talk to a friend. We pause our conversation every few minutes as gusts of wind silence us into wonder.

1:20 p.m. We start for home, and it’s a very slow-going drive. The roads are pretty clear, but the wind compels everyone to caution. Miciah, my 6-year-old daughter, asks what we would do if our car blows over in the wind. I tell her it won’t. “But what if it does, Mom?” I repeat that it won’t, but I wonder for a minute what we would do. I remind myself how hard it would be to tip our car.
We are almost home when we see our first downed tree of the storm. It’s laying over the right-hand lane. I’ll have to tell Rob about it, so he knows.

1:30 p.m. Upon arriving home I tell the kids that if they want to keep their backyard toys, they had better pick them all up and put them in the shed. I walk out to help them and find our gas grill had been blown over. I pick it up, scattering black gunk everywhere. I discover the handle has split in 2 as a result of the fall. I gather some smaller pieces to glue back on later. I call my husband, Rob, still at the church building, and ask what he thinks I should do. Leave it until he gets home? Move it down below and to the side of the deck—out of the wind? Put it inside the garage? Getting it off the deck wouldn’t be easy for me—the grill is heavy and awkward for one 105-lb. person—but it needed to be done and soon. Rob says to do whatever. I warn him about the tree over the road and ask him to come home quickly; things are fine, but it just feels like a time to have your family together.

(picture: the damaged grill handle. Picture taken Monday morning.)

I brave moving the grill down the deck steps on my own. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. All of our outside items are secured. I look over into the Jasper’s backyard and see their deck table laying on its side, the chairs in chaos. One chair has escaped the deck entirely and is laying, its white legs in the air, in the middle of their yard.

1:45 p.m. Neighborhood men have gathered in the street, I assume to survey any damage. I’m watching them take a wind-forced step every minute or so. I turn on the TV to see what’s going on. One weather station says we’re seeing winds of 25 – 35 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph. Another station says sustained winds of 37 mph. I believe it. The trees look angry.
I watch footage of destruction in Texas.

2:00 p.m. I should go start dinner. Company is coming at 4:00. Maybe I should cancel that, but I don’t want to be a wimp. My kids are squirmy because things are tense. I put in a movie to watch so they’ll calm down. We get to the menu.

2:03 p.m. We lose our power. The DVD is still in the player. The kids want to know what’s going on. I was about to check my e-mail. A clock in my kitchen stops at 2:03 and 15 seconds. Rob is still not home.

(picture: the clock.)

I call my friends and tell them I would love to have them over for dinner, but our power just went out. We talk for 10 minutes or so and then their power goes out, too. I call Rob, tell him the power’s out. I call another friend on the other side of town and talk to them for a few minutes to see if their power is on. It is. He says, light-heartedly, “Yeah, it sucks to have your power off and all...” And he’s gone. Their power is out.

2:30 p.m. My uncle Rick who lives two houses down joins the growing throng of men outside. I send Miciah out to ask him if there’s a tree down. The men are only maybe 50 feet from my door and normally I’d just holler out my questions. They wouldn’t hear me above the wind. While Miciah is outside I watch her. She is fine, of course, but the wind is scary. Elijah, 4 years old, joins me at the window and asks if Miciah will blow away in the wind. I tell him that she won’t. He says he wants to pray for her so she won’t blow away, and I tell him that’s a good idea. He prays: “Heavenly Father: Grateful Miciah won’t blow away. Amen.” He likes to say he’s grateful for things before they’ve actually happened. It gives things a sort of finality in advance. (Maybe I should try that: I am grateful for the million dollars I received.)
I call Miciah back inside and she reports, “He says there’s a tree down and it knocked out our power, but he doesn’t know where it is.” I wonder, then, what the men are looking at. I will send Rob out when he gets home.

2:45 p.m. Rob isn’t home and I’m antsy for him to BE HOME. Time is moving slowly, and I don’t know what time it is anyway—all my clocks are electric-dependent. I call Rob. He is with Wes. They were finishing up when a power flicker interrupted their work and they had to start over. They have just now given up on it actually working and are walking into the parking lot. That is the truth—I can hear the wind.
I resume watching the men outside and Corene, my aunt, joins them. So this isn’t a men-only party. I notice them concentrating in several directions, but I can’t tell what they’re seeing. They turn to face a house across the street and, Oh! His black shingles are being flapped in the wind, green shingles showing underneath the few square-feet section. It almost looks like the wind is rolling up the top layer. I look at a house a few houses up. A single patch of shingles is bubbling up.

(picture: the black shingles with green shingles showing. Picture taken on Monday morning.)

(picture: the roof with the area of shingles that were bubbling. Picture taken Monday morning.)

3:00 p.m. Rob has joined me in our bedroom. As we talk about the day, we listen to the wind making the southeast corner of our house talk. Moaning and creaking. We wonder if our house is damaged, or if it soon will be. I ask Rob if he saw the neighbor’s roof. Rob says, “Yeah. Rick’s roof is damaged, too.” “Really? Badly?” So THAT’S what they were looking at in that direction.

3:30 p.m. I look out into our backyard to see what there is to see that direction. Two tall trees behind some houses look like they’re taking a beating. I have never seen trees move that much. I point them out to Rob because I think they are missing some sections. It’s hard to tell and we reach no definite conclusion.
I look over the roofs of the houses and see minimal damage. Then the wind gusts and the two roofs I’m focused on suddenly look like Lift-a-Flap books. And while I’ve seen trees blow in storms before, I have NEVER seen a roof do THAT.

3:45 p.m. I call my parents on our cell phone. Usually my dad calls me before I even know there’s bad weather in Cincinnati (he’s a weather station junkie). I chastise him for being behind. He says, “Getting some rain, are you?” in a slightly mocking, yet playful tone. “No, actually,” I respond. “No rain at all. But the wind is INCREDIBLE.”

4:00 p.m. We venture outside. All five of us. I walk outside holding Teancom, the 2-year-old, who is only wearing a diaper because, despite winds gusting violently, it is still 95 degrees outside. We join the pack and the group has grown to include wives and neighborhood children. The gathering has moved, too, and we are all standing in Rick’s front yard. We quickly find out that everyone is waiting around for a pine tree, weakened by last year’s drought, to fall over. Bob, the owner of the tree, had told Mike, his neighbor, that the tree might fall, and with that lean, it might fall right on top of his Ford F series truck. Mike had moved his truck out of danger. Then they stayed around watching and waiting.

(picture: the pine tree. The owner, Bob, is in the foreground with the hat on.)While they had been watching the pine tree they heard a loud crack and turned to see a tree fall in Rick’s front yard. Rick had two trees seriously damaged in a strange wind gust earlier this year. Both trees were injured anew in this storm.
I survey the tree and walk up to Corene, sitting on her front porch. I say, “I feel like you’ve won some lottery for unluckiness! Your roof and your trees!” Corene laughs. The wind feels stronger now. 50 mph seemed like a lot two hours ago. Now it seems a little low.
I tell a few men that before the power had gone out the weather station said gusts up to 50 mph. Bob says, “They measured 75 at the airport.” “Wow.” Even though I’m in the middle of it, and 75 seems about right, it’s still hard to believe; 75 is a big number.
Rick says, “They did not prepare us for this at ALL.” Everyone agrees. This storm seems to have come out of nowhere: no advance warning. All the news said was a wind advisory. This is a wind ADVISORY? We should have known it was coming, I guess; Ike did just rip through Texas. But Ohio is a long way from Texas, and hurricanes usually don’t reach Ohio.
I look into the Jasper’s backyard to see the lawn chair. It’s now sitting right-side-up, like someone meant to put it just like that, right in the middle of the yard.
Men are taking verbal bets about the tree. “Oh, it’ll fall for sure.” “No way. It’ll hold.” “Look at it lean in the wind. It’s falling.” “It’s held for 40 years—it’ll be the last tree standing on our street.” People have out their cell phones, cameras, and camcorders, just in case. This is pretty incredible—I send Rob to get our camera, too.

4:45 p.m. In about 20 minutes time the temperature drops maybe 20 degrees. This feels more like a fall storm should feel: windy and 75 degrees. Teancom is occasionally scared in my arms and leans into me. Rob tells me he’s taking Teancom inside to get some clothes on him. “It’s not that cold,” I say. “She says with her jacket on,” Rick chimes. It hadn’t occured to me that Teancom was leaning into me this time because he was cold. Rob takes Teancom into the house and I turn to Rick. “I guess I meant it WASN’T cold when we first came out here.” A few minutes later Rob comes back out with a fully-dressed Teancom.

(picture: Rob holding Teancom.)

“They said the count is 550,000 houses without power now. It jumped 50,000 in 15 minutes,” Mike informs us. He must have a battery-powered radio. We should think about getting one of those. “Huh,” I said. “Must have been the 15 minutes I was on the phone with my friends.”
The storm picks up right near the end. The wind has been constant for hours now. During a particularly strong burst, we hear the pine tree crack as a split appears from the base to a few feet up. The ground to the side of the tree lifts visibly. The tree leans precariously and the expectant crowd gets louder. But the burst is over and the tree returns to upright. It’s not vertical any more, though; each burst increases the tilt. The tree will fall, if not now then later, and if not on its own then by the hand of a tree-cutter.

(picture: the pine tree now tilting. Mike is walking through the foreground.)

By now we’ve taken several videos and pictures with our camera. Not too many, though—the wind makes it almost impossible to hold the camera still, and it’s dangerous to get too close to the trees anyway. I’ll have to take pictures tomorrow.

(picture: the pine tree, fuzzy, because the wind was blowing too hard to keep the camera still.)

5:00 p.m. “Rain is coming. You can feel it,” Rick says. It’s darker now. I worry about being prepared before it’s too dark to prepare. We still haven’t retrieved all of our emergency supplies from the basement. We need to eat dinner. And I don’t want the kids to freak when it gets dark. So we say goodbye to the neighbors and retreat to our home. The wind has died down a little and other people are returning home as well.

6:00 p.m. By now we have all our candles out and ready, we’ve found our flashlights, and Rob is cooking spaghetti on our camping stove. The wind is gone now. Still, I don’t expect we’ll have power at least overnight, and maybe not for a few days. 550,000 is a lot of people without power.
I look outside into the backyard. I look at those two trees that I earlier thought might be missing sections. I point them out to Rob. We decide they’ve definitely lost major sections in the storm. One now looks like a half-tree—limbs on one side and not the other. The other has maybe a quarter missing from it.

6:30 p.m. With our kids, we go over ground rules for a power outage. First and most important, DO NOT OPEN THE FRIDGE. Miciah asks why and we explain. Next we go over what runs off electricity. They come up with lights, the TV, the computer. “And do we have electricity?” I ask. “No,” Miciah and Elijah respond in unison. “Can Mommy and Daddy do anything about that?” “No.” “That’s right. So I don’t want to hear ANY complaining. If I hear you complain about not watching TV or anything like that, you’ll get a time out, because we can’t fix it. Okay?” They both say, “Okay.”

7:00 p.m. Rob moves all our freezer food from the fridge’s freezer into our chest freezer downstairs. Our chest freezer is almost completely full, with the most valuable food on the bottom (where we figure it’ll stay coldest), and cold packs of blue ice laid out on top. Back upstairs, he takes the ice from the fridge’s freezer and puts it in ziplock bags and places those, plus any leftover cold packs, into the fridge. We have a few hundred dollars worth of food in the freezer and fridge. We don’t want to lose that.
It’s dark now and our candles are burning. The kids are bored because I made them put their toys away—low light and stray toys means hurt feet. There’s not much to do when it’s dark.

7:30 p.m. The kids are all in bed and two are asleep. That’s some sort of record for us.

8:00 p.m. We get a call from Northwest Local School District: No school tomorrow. Wise. This is a mini-crisis and people have damage to assess and fix tomorrow. The insurance companies will be busy. So no school. Good. Miciah can sleep in.

8:30 p.m. Rob and I are talking by candlelight about the day. Mid-conversation Rob grabs my hand and says, “Come with me.” I feel like a little kid being led to some special place. We walk outside and he says, “Look. The street is dark. This may never happen again.” It IS dark. We count the houses with candles inside. You can tell if it’s a candle or a lantern by the color of the glow. “Plus it’s so quiet,” I note. No electrical hum. Too bad it’s overcast, or we could have seen all the stars in the universe.

9:00 p.m. We finally resign ourselves to the boredom and go to bed. This is why people used to go to bed early—there was nothing else to do!

9:15 p.m. Our dinner-invite friends call: “Do you have power yet?” Nope. “Oh. Ours was only out about half an hour.” They tell us we’re living so 19th Century tonight and then say that if we need anything to let them know—and they mean it—that’s the type of people they are. “Your power will be on tomorrow, though. For sure.” I’m skeptical.

9:30 p.m. Bernar calls. He was working today when the power went out. He doesn’t know if his work will have power tomorrow. He lives an hour and a half out from the city, so he’s not sure what he should do about finding out if work is cancelled or not. If he waits too long when it’s on, then he’ll be in by noon. But if he drives all the way into work before he knows, and then they don’t have work, that would be a waste, too. We wish him luck. He wishes us luck, too; he has power at his house.

Monday, Sept. 15, T + 1
8:00 a.m. Miciah bee-lines for my bed, “Do I have school today, Mom?” “No, Miciah.” “Yes!” She raises her hands in the air and runs into the living room where her brothers are. My kids are used to watching TV in the morning, so they’re quickly bored and rambunctious. Rob has taken a late morning (because he didn’t want to shower in the dark, he says. I agree—showering in the dark is a little creepy), and starts breakfast for the kids. We still have no power, so we’re anxious to use the milk as quickly as possible. It’s still cold, but who knows how long that’ll last. So that means cold cereal and milk.
Some time during breakfast Elijah goes to open the fridge. I yell, “No-o-o-o!” grab the handle shut, and keep my hand there. I re-emphasize how important it is to keep the fridge shut. I know he barely understands, but that’s okay so long as he keeps the fridge door shut.
Rob and I debate who should take the cell phone. It needs to be charged. I tell Rob that I’ll charge it in the van when I go out today.

8:30 a.m. I’m supposed to have an appointment at 11:30 a.m., but who knows what’s going to happen after a day like yesterday. I call the place minutes after they open and ask. I’m okay with either way, they both make sense to me, but I am NOT driving an hour to find out it’s been cancelled. I called a different location, but the lady said she thinks they’re still open, running off a generator, and gives me their number. I call the number and no one answers. That’s odd. I’ll try again later.

9:00 a.m. I head outside to take pictures of all the damage on my street. There wasn’t a ton, not a lot dramatic, but almost every house had SOMEthing. I thought a photo log would be interesting. One house has a ton of siding missing, and I definitely want a good picture of it, but the owner is outside working on his car and I don’t want to feel lame by asking him if I can photograph his house. I don’t want a “Sucks to be you” conversation; I’m horrible at knowing the right thing to say. I instead decide to take pictures of everything else first—maybe he’ll be gone after I finish the rest.

(picture: one shingle out of place.)

(picture: another roof missing some shingles. I hadn't noticed this damage the day before.)

(picture: Rick and Corene's roof.)

I take pictures of every roof with even one shingle missing. I take pictures of Rick and Corene’s downed trees from many angles now that it’s safe. I like the street sign that is mangled, twisted, and now standing at a near-45-degree angle with a tree branch hanging from it and a power line wrapped around it (maybe it wasn't a power line. A phone line? The men of the neighborhood were trying to figure it out last night. They decided it might be a phone line). I take too many pictures of the sign—it’s hard to capture in a photo. I see some neighbors and I say, “Taking pictures for my folks.” They laugh and I say, “It was pretty cool.” It WAS cool.

(picture: the downed tree in Rick's front yard.)

(picture: Rick's downed tree, a close-up.)

(picture: the no parking sign.)

(picture: the street sign, another angle.)

Rick and Corene’s daughter, Alecia, pulls in as I’m photographing the tree. I tell her what I’m doing and chat with her for a moment. As we’re chatting I notice the power line--or whatever kind of line it is--(from the other side of the break) coiled on the grass. I take a picture. I look in their backyard to see the fallen tree there. I walk into the backyard and take a few pitures.

(picture: the coiled line on the ground)

(picture: the damaged tree in Rick's backyard.)

(picture: the downed limb from the backyard tree.)

I return to my yard and the owner of the siding-damaged house is still outside. I venture a far-off picture from the edge of my lawn. I decide that I’m just being silly and I walk over. He only lives two houses up the street. As I approach, and as soon as I’m in comfortable earshot, I ask, “Can I take a picture of your house?” With that why-not look he said, “Sure.” I talk to him for a minute about the storm and how cool it was. He agrees. I ask if his homeowner’s insurance will cover this. He half-sighs and says, “Yeah. Unfortunately I carry a really high deductible.” “Oh,” I say. “Saves you money, though.” He stares blankly at me. “Month-to-month, I mean.” He nods slowly and I kick myself for once again saying the wrong thing in a “Sucks to be you” conversation. He continues, “Well, and I lost siding on the other side of the house in June and I met my $1,000 deductible then.” “Oh, yeah,” I say, as I’m remembering. That was the same wind storm that damaged Rick’s trees earlier this year. I had forgotten it took off some of this man’s siding, too. I close the conversation as graciously as possible, and he was very nice. I take a few pictures of the siding hanging down from the house into the bushes below. He is gone by the time I finish a few seconds later. I wonder if he went inside intentionally.

(picture: the far-off picture of the siding.)

(picture: the siding hanging down into the bushes below.)

I return again to my front yard and take some pictures of our wind-damaged garden—the most damage to our home—and say a silent prayer of gratitude.

(picture: our flower pot. You can tell which way the wind was blowing.)

(picture: rose blooms broken off and dangling.)

9:30 a.m. I call about my appointment again. The phones are still not working. I call the other office and ask the same lady about it. She informs me that their phones are down, but that the appointment is still on.

I walk into the backyard to take more pictures. I was hopeful that the Jasper's deck furniture would still be in disarray, with the chair in the middle of the yard, but they've already picked everything up. Nothing looks to be damaged. No damage to their roof, either. They are lucky, too.

Disappointingly, the Lift-a-Flap roofs look hardly damaged at all. One of the roofs had a few flipped-up shingles, but they don't turn out in the pictures I try to take. My backyard-neighbors have damage I hadn't seen yesterday. The gutter is hanging from the edge of their house. Not dramatically, but enough. I look up the street to see what there is to see that way and find that the siding-damaged house's roof looks like a checkerboard. I take a picture as I think about how much money they've just lost this week. I hope they'll be alright.

(picture: the checkerboard roof of the siding-damaged house.)

(picture: the gutter hanging off the house.)

10:00 a.m. I get a phone call to tell me that the appointment is still on. She says, “We thought people might want to know, since our phones are down and people might be trying to call.” I told her I’d already tried to call several times. I’m actually half-annoyed that the appointment is still on. I think about the drive ahead of me and wonder how it’ll be with traffic lights out.

10:30 a.m. I leave, early, for Jennett’s house. Jennett has agreed to watch my kids still, even though there’s two extra than planned—Miciah, my daughter, and Jeana, her daughter. It’s a 15-minute drive to Jennett’s house, so this should leave me with half an hour to 45 minutes to get to my appointment from her house. Shouldn’t be a problem. I grab my camera right before leaving, just in case there’s something else I want to photograph. I haven’t decided completely what my picture-taking philosophy for the day is, though. I don’t want to spend my time trying to capture the most incredible, only to have to re-evaluate repeatedly what the most incredible is. I decide I probably won’t take any pictures because the photo log for my street should be enough, but I don’t want to regret not having my camera on hand.
I start keeping a tally on my hand of the stoplights I come to. How many total and how many are actually working. This isn’t hard to do while driving, since most stoplights are now 4-way stops, and they take a while to get through.
I’m over halfway there when traffic stops. We’re going nowhere fast. I know there’s a shortcut coming up, but it’s still several turns ahead. I gear up for a long wait. As I’m inching forward, I see something I want to photograph. It’s not a tree. It’s not cars lined up at non-working stoplights. It’s not shingles off a roof. It’s an American flag. An American flag wrapped around itself and fallen from its normal position. It’s still attached to the pole, but the base was broken off and now it’s just dangling. I take out my camera and take two pictures from the driver’s seat of my van. I wonder for a second what other people will think of the “message” of this photograph of a fallen flag. But it doesn’t bother me what other people will think of it; the flag spoke to me, so I took a picture. I think it’s a beautiful image.

(picture: the "fallen" American flag.)

Taking the picture has lost me no time in the traffic jam. I look into backyards and see men, who normally would be at work, surveying fallen trees. There’s half a look of “Wow. How do I tackle this?” in their eyes. Maybe they’re thinking about the money it will cost to hire a tree-removal company. Or if it’s even possible to do it themselves. And if they can, how long will it take them? I see a shed tipped over and leaning on a chain-link fence. I see damaged fencing and so many damaged trees that I stop counting. At some point a downed tree loses its shock value.

11:10 a.m. I arrive at Jennett’s house, 40 minutes after leaving from home. I’ve counted 7 stoplights, 1 of which was working. Usually when I drop off my kids, we chat for a minute, but I quickly leave again, knowing what kind of drive might be ahead of me. Jennett gave me some tips about avoiding major stoplights, and the way she’s told me to go is working nicely. I’m making decent time mazing through town when I’m stopped by a cop car sitting across all 4 lanes of traffic. Just beyond the cop car is a tree that’s fallen onto a telephone pole, and both tree and telephone pole are leaning precariously over the road. I think about taking a picture of this, but I think once again about my philosophy of avoiding taking pictures of the most dramatic. Plus, there’s a cop car sitting right there. I don’t want the cop to be annoyed at me: “I’m sorry, Mr. Cop, Sir. I’ll turn around after this picture.” I turn around and almost immediately I regret not taking the picture.

11:30 a.m. I’m not yet to the freeway. I think for a moment that I’m glad we had decided this morning that I would take the cell phone instead of Rob—I need it now. I call the place for my appointment, or rather the other office since they have a phone still, and tell the lady about my situation. I tell her, truthfully, that I’ve been on the road for an hour now. She asks how long it’ll take me to get to the office. I’m a little surprised she’d ask that, since I thought I’d be there by now! Clearly, it will be impossible to tell. I chuckle a little and say, “I don’t know. I’m not even close. Maybe half an hour?” She says she’ll call the place, make sure it’s still okay for me to come, and says she’ll say AT LEAST half an hour. I gave her half an hour as a long estimate, but whatever. She calls me back shortly and says it’s just fine. They must know what it’s like on a day like today.
By the time I reach the freeway, my stoplight count is up to 3 out of 12 working stoplights. In the city, most stoplights are working. The few that aren’t have cops directing traffic. So a single cop is standing in the middle of eight lanes of traffic, plus four turn lanes. I think about my little street without power. I want power as soon as possible, but I’d rather those stoplights be fixed first. The roads are not safe.

11:50 a.m. I check in at my appointment only 20 minutes late. I sign in and the woman at the reception desk says she’ll just need a copy of my driver’s license. I check my purse and my check book isn’t there. No driver’s license. I flush for a moment, quietly say a cuss word, and then say, “I don’t have it. Can we do this without it?” She pauses, looks at me, and says, “Sure. We’ll just need it next time you come in.” I tell her thank you and say, “It’s just been one of those days, you know?” She nods and smiles.
While waiting I hear the receptionist on her cell phone. She’s leaving a message and says that there were 700,000 homes without power at the peak. Power might be out until the weekend. I’m a little startled. When she gets off the phone I say, “The weekend? Really?” I was prepared for Wednesday, maybe Thursday. But the weekend? That’s a long time to not have power. I remain optimistic, though. Surely it won’t be until Saturday. The receptionist tells me that people rushed the stores for batteries and now all the batteries are gone. I usually dislike words like “all” and “none” because I assume people overstate the case, but I can believe that all the batteries are gone from the stores. People have been freaking out a little. I tell the receptionist that we were pretty prepared. We had batteries and candles and flashlights and food we can eat. We even have a camping stove and other camping stuff (I never realized before how much camping stuff doubles as emergency preparedness stuff). She says, “I hadn’t thought of a camping stove. I have one of those. That’s a good idea.”

2:15 p.m. On the way back to Jennett’s house I stop to take my second set of pictures. It’s people lined up at a gas station. The line of cars must be half a mile long. I can’t get all the cars in the picture from my angle, but it’s still just incredible. I’m glad I got that one in a picture.

2:45 p.m. I’m back at Jennett’s house. Another friend, Deanna, is over with her two children. They don’t have power, either. All the kids get along great, and this feels like a perfect way to spend the day. I tell Jennett and Deanna about my picture of the gas station. Deanna tells us that it took her an hour to get to Jennett’s house (and she lives even closer to Jennett than I do) because she had to stop for gas. She only waited 30 minutes, she said, but still! Wow. We talk about how people are freaking out a little. People lined up at McDonald’s. There aren’t many places with power today, but the places that are open, they must be making a killing.

3:30 p.m. My friend, Rebecca, calls to check in on us. They’ve had power since last night at around 10:00 p.m. I tell her our power is still out, but it’s okay, we’re prepared and we’re not freaking out. She says, “I’m sorry you’ve been displaced.” This seems like a funny way to put it. Hanging out at Jennett’s house with my kids doesn’t seem like we’ve been displaced. Jennett Simpson is one of my best friends, and my family often spends long hours at the Simpson’s house. Today Jennett has offered us dinner, so I hang out so I don’t have to drive home and then drive back—who knows how long that would take! I call Rob and tell him to just come straight to the Simpson’s house after work. I advise him to leave early and to avoid the intersection that took me 25 minutes to get through. He says he will try to leave early, probably by about 4:00, and he certainly will avoid that intersection.

5:30 p.m. Rob calls to tell me he still hasn’t left yet. I try not to act annoyed. I’m sure it doesn’t work. The Flamms, who also don’t have power, have arrived at the Simpson’s house. Jennett is making a huge pot of chili to feed everyone. She has a very generous heart, and her food is amazing. I feel lucky to have friends like the Simpsons.
I walk outside to take a picture of a small downed pine tree laying over the sidewalk just up the street from Jennett’s house. I take Elijah with me because he wants to go. That ended up being a good move, because he had a good time posing for some pictures, and some of them turned out decent. On my way back to Jennett’s house, and as I'm taking pictures of another damaged roof, I overhear a neighbor saying that school is cancelled for tomorrow, too. Jennett is in a different school district, so I’m curious to see if Miciah is off school, too. It seems incredible that school is out two days in a row now for this storm, but the roads are still crazy, and it’s the right call. When I get back to the house, I tell Jennett that I heard school was cancelled, and I show her the pictures of the pine tree. She didn’t even know the downed tree was there.

(picture: downed pine tree over the sidewalk.)

(picture: Elijah in front of pine tree.)

(picture: Elijah in front of the pine tree's roots.)

(picture: another damaged roof in Jennett's neighborhood.)
6:00 p.m. Dinner is almost ready. I head upstairs to listen to the news and watch the school closing list. They give official wind gust numbers for different areas around Cincinnati. The lowest measured was 69 mph, the highest, about 85 mph, and the average around 75 mph. That’s enough to put us into Class 1 Hurricane status! I can now officially say that Cincinnati had a hurricane! Pretty cool. The news anchors also say that 500,000 people are without power still. Most people should have power in the next 24 – 48 hours, but it could be until Saturday. I’m sure we’ll be in the first category of people, though. We should have power by Wednesday night.
Miciah’s school is in fact on the school closing list. So school is cancelled for the second day. Though I can’t imagine it’ll be out on Wednesday, too.

6:30 p.m. Rob finally arrives at the Simpson’s house. He said the streets were pretty clear even though most of the stoplights still weren’t working. He made good time getting home, and he avoided that intersection I warned him about. Dinner is ready and we sit down with the Simpsons and the Flamms to eat some chili. It is possibly the best chili I’ve ever had, and I’m not just saying that—Jennett could open her own restaurant, she’s that good. Over dinner we talk about the hurricane. Krista Flamm says that they went to Kroger today. They didn’t have power, so they had just basic lighting run from a generator. They also didn’t have any perishables available, of course. We mused about how much money the grocery stores would lose during this power outage. It made the things in my freezer and fridge seem insignificant by comparison. Krista went on to talk about some of the people in the store. One man was there for bananas. He was so excited to find bananas after hitting several other stores that weren’t open. He expressed gratitude to a store clerk. Another lady asked for fresh bakery doughnuts. The store clerk said, “We don’t have any doughnuts.” Huffily, the lady said, “Why don’t have you have doughnuts? You always have them and I want them!” Shocked, the store clerk said, “But we don’t have power.” It made me wonder how someone could be upset at a store for not having fresh baked doughnuts when most of the city was without power.
I say that I’m looking at this week as a nice break on our energy bill. Krista says, “I’ve been saying that, too!” We all chuckle. It’s inconvenient to be without power, sure, but we still have water, and people in Texas don’t. We even have hot water, since our water heater is gas. This could be a lot worse.

7:30 p.m. We usually hang out longer with the Simpsons and play games, but today is an extraordinary day. We decide to go home and check on the food in our fridge and freezer. The Browns have offered us their freezer and fridge so we didn’t have to lose our food. There is a cop directing traffic at that horrid intersection, so we get through it in no time. I stop to take a picture of a person’s house that had two trees fall, right next to each other. I don’t think the pictures really do the scene justice—it’s hard to tell that there are two fallen trees there. As I turn back around to head home, I see a tree laying in pieces in someone's front yard. It's not a big tree, but it feel over completely in several pieces. I take a picture of that, too.

(picture: the fallen tree in front of the pine tree.)

(picture: the same tree, with the pine tree damage showing behind it. The photo's blurry because of the setting sun.)

(picture: the tree in pieces.)
8:00 p.m. Our food is doing alright, so we’ll leave it till tomorrow morning. Rob says it’ll probably be fine until tomorrow evening, but I tell him I’m not interested in pushing that limit. He concedes and says he’ll stay home tomorrow morning so we can move all our food over to the Brown’s house. I am glad that I don’t have to stress about losing our food. Losing that much food all at once would really hurt our budget. I call Rebecca and tell her that we’ll worry about it tomorrow morning.

8:30 p.m. I call my Mom to check in for the day. I ask her how long we ever went without power when I was a kid. I told her I remembered almost getting to 24 hours, but I don’t remember any longer than that. She said that she thinks we’ve now been without power longer than they ever have been. That seems monumental somehow, but I can’t pin down how exactly. Probably because it’s really not monumental at all. No one gets medals for having their power out longest. I tell her that this whole thing is just fascinating.