Hurricane Die-rene

I think I should start this post off with something a bit out of the more obvious section - Hurricane Irene is gone. Done-zo. Dead. Off destroying some obscure part of the Atlantic Ocean. Woo hoo! It was a long weekend, a mere two days that felt like an entire seven. It's a good thing that my phone had the Web on it (or however remotely close the EnV3 comes to the Internet), or else I'd be driving to the school right now for volleyball practice, only to find that everybody's ditched. Even the coaches. So technically life doesn't go back to normal until tomorrow.
We stayed at my grandmother's house where there were less trees and Mama Chelby figured it would be safer while Pops was in Ireland. Well the irony of it all - I think it would've been better if we'd just stayed at home. Yeah, there were branches flying but when we checked on the house yesterday there were no downed oaks slicing our bedrooms in half nor where there any gaping holes in the living room picture wall. So I think we're good to go here.
All while there was no power and we were forced to bond - my sister, my brother, my cousins, and I - I was trying to come up with a good topic for today's blog post. Yes, I'm really that much of a loser, but when you are bored out of your mind in a potential week-long power outage and everyone's resorted to making fart noises with their mouths, you don't really care what goes through your mind. So for today I came up with something along the lines of how a storm can bring people closer.
At around eleven o'clock yestermorning, my mother raced to the basement in sheer horror to find a good inch and a half of water flooding concrete floor. "DON'T TOUCH IT!" she'd hollered at me, who sprinted to the stairs at her "Holy crap!" to see if there was anything interesting.
"YOU COULD BE ELECTROCUTED!" Yep, she was still screaming. For some reason every word that comes out of Mom's mouth is an echoing shout when she's either a.) excited, or b.) telling a story that only she and my aunts get a kick out of.
"Okay, okay," I said, before swishing my foot in a tiny bit because, after all, my mother was prodding around through the basement doors in her rain boots. "I'll go tell Grandma."
"What's the problem." White-haired and nightgown-clothed, Grandma Chelby was making her way to the top of the steps.
I tried to step in front of her, but a determined Grandma is a stubborn Grandma. "I don't think you should - "
"Holy shit." Too late.
And that's when Aunt Peggy - nextdoor neighbor and Nervous Nelly - was called onto the scene, including her two kids Mer and Jimmy. Already we've got good neighbors. "What happened?!" Aunt Peggy called down the stairs, already making a beeline for the basement doors. Another failed attempt to stop her entrailed.
About fifteen minutes later our good friend Jacques was downstairs, telling us how to pump water out of the basement while all the other neighbors gathered and discussed their own water issues. The creek behind the development was swollen and now a monstrous river - problems were inevitable.
A few other neighbors, Butch and John, came over to hook up a few pipes to the basement subpump and lower the water while Jacques instructed them what to do from behind, and soon water was flowing steadily from the pipe. We thanked them and then they were off to their own homes.
Later that night, after a day of chaotic running around, watching the news on where Irene was now, and keeping each other company. When everything was finished, I napped for about two hours while Aunt Peggy, Mom, Grandma, Mer, and my sister Alex sat around the table and gossiped. Meanwhile, the wind was picking up and the sunny light from outside died down to a tainted gray.
"If it starts hurricaning (?) again I'm movin'," Grandma declared, already standing up from the table in a hurry. I rolled over on the couch to see her standing over me, yanking the shades down and already hobbling off to the next window.
"I'm going to inspect our own house," Aunt Peggy then said, grabbing their Havanese Magoo and beckoning Mer. Oye, paranoid moms must really run in this family.
Later that night for dinner, Grandma made her famous spaghetti and meatballs after we *gasp* played catch outside with Mer and Jimmy. I even got a glimpse of the nextdoor neighbor - now a senior at my school - who was playing basketball; I'd never noticed he lived beside my aunt. Oh, the things you see when a storm knocks out the electronic devices.
"We should offer supper to the neighbors," Grandma said, stirring around the kitchen over a pot of meatballs, sausage, spaghetti, and shell pasta. I quietly seconded that notion for the sake of my senior buddy coming into the house and possibly being able to talk to him.
But the idea was nixed, so Mom and Aunt Peggy packed up the food and drove to our Uncle Jimmy's house a few towns down (that had power) to store it there. In the mean time, Mer, Alex, and I took a walk with my dog Olive. We stopped along the way to talk to some neighbors, make sure they were okay, and hurried on. Mer looked like a determined mother in her baseball hat and neon walking shorts.
On our last lap we noticed about four neighbors congregated in the middle of the street, and I immediately recognized a girl by the name of Tori from school. She was in my grade, I'd seen her, talked to her, maybe once or twice. She waved, but I didn't know she was waving to me, so I only gave her an awkward smile. The whole while Mer was chatting it up with Butch, Pat, and Tori and her dad, I saw her sizing me up. Well, shoot. I hope I have no classes with her this year or else that will cause for a quite uncomfortable encounter.
You know, some people will be cursing this hurricane until the day they die; for some, I don't blame 'em. Irene practically ruined half the houses in my town. But for what it's worth, I think this storm brought everyone else together - I mean, how many concerned-neighbor-meetings do you see that's not from a movie that took place during the 1800s? We also had some cousinly bonding going there - nothing like Rummy 500 around a dim tent light in the kitchen while the women listen to the radio in the den, eh? Farty noises with our mouths, potato chips & veggie dip, and my alter-ego Helga Schneebly (it's really just me doing a godawful Russian accent, but it's entertainment for the night). I'd say despite the destruction Irene brought to our area, we survived it successfully.
And maybe I still need some people skills...no, I definitely do. We'll work that out, though. Sorry for now, Tori, but maybe someday I'll get it right.