Wednesday Word of the Day—Sandy

NYC's South Street Seaport under water.

My peeps and I are leaky eyed over the outpouring of caring on Twitter, Facebook and the CB these past couple of days. It's been hard for us, but we got through Sandy better than most. We only lost power for about 4 hours Monday night into Tuesday morning. Tuesday, we had power, but no Internet, phone or tv. Since the power was back, we did have Wifi so I could tweet and tell my furrends I was OK. When we think about all the people who lost their houses to floods, fire, and storm damage, how can we complain about a little inconvenience. (TW made me write that. I wanna complain!) Pop's office was closed Monday and Tuesday so we knew he was safe with us. His office is closed Wednesday too cos Lower Manhattan has no power and no train service, due to the subways being flooded.

Our hatches were battened.

We prepared the best we could: filling both bathtubs with water and having the house stocked with human and cat supplies. This was the first time I've seen the curtains drawn since I've lived here. The peeps took my PTU out in case of emergency. We were relieved to learn that our local shelter welcomed anipals.

TW was nervous Sunday night when the wind started kicking up which made ME nervous. Thank you very much, Woman! I kept jumping on the window sill every five minutes to see what was going on. Monday afternoon and evening was something we'd never experienced before. There's been many Nor'esters, blizzards and even Hurricane Irene since we've been living here but this was the worst by far. Once the wind gusts, reaching over 80 mph started hitting our Northern exposure windows I won't lie to you, it was scary. For the peeps, I mean. It got so bad, our concrete building began rocking and rolling. We could feel it swaying. Things were falling off shelves and pictures hanging on the walls were turned crooked. I wanted to play in and shred my tissue paper all night. It was nice of Pop's friends to use tissue paper to wrap his gifts, I might add. Get the peacock feather, Woman! I was running through the condo doing my best Thundering Herd of Elephants impression.

The PTU was ready! The peeps had their bases covered.

I'm sure my furrends in Florida and states that normally get hurricanes were laughing at us but this wasn't your typical Category 1 hurricane. Once it joined forces with the other storms, it took on the characteristics of a Category 3 storm. I'm sure if you watched the news, you saw the video of the rivers running down the streets of the Jersey shore and in cities like Hoboken, Jersey City and New York City, where the sea wall at Battery Park was almost 14 feet. You'll be happy to know that Zelda, the Battery Park turkey survived the floods.

Pop had his police scanner on all night listening to what was happening locally.  In my little town, they had boats rescuing people from their homes, trees falling and debris falling from buildings. The building next door to ours lost much of its siding near the roof. Again, we were lucky cos the screens didn't even blow out of our windows.

The one thing that completely shocked the peeps was a fire in Queens that burned 80 houses to the ground. The video is amazing.

Many thanks for all your concern. I feel blessed to know such caring peeps and anipals. Tomorrow, I'll start visiting you again and leaving snarky humorously appropriate comments.