Birthday Hurricane

Today is my 49th birthday.  I thought I should put that out there first thing in case you were wondering.  In my heart I only feel 29.  I wanted to do something fun to mark the occasion and I decided that additional piercings or tattooing anything were out.  (Actually, I would have considered the piercings, but my older daughters nixed the idea.  I meant my ears of course!)   Instead I visited the hair salon and added a few red highlights to my hair.  My only request was that the color not be mistaken for anything that would naturally occur.  So now I have “Cincinnati Red” streaks in my hair.  I knew I had successfully reached my goal when Meg looked at me and said “Yikes, that’s bright!”

It’s been quite a week here.  Tuesday we experienced a 5.8 magnitude earthquake.  I found out later that I was standing in one of the safest places possible at the time–in a doorway–of the Frostie Moose, my favorite ice cream shop! Pudge and Reagan were with me and I wondered how they would react.  Reagan’s eyes got very big, and she asked, “was that an earthquake?”.  Pudge very matter of factly said, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to go through an earthquake.  Now I know.”  The confusion about what was happening, the jammed cell phones, and the gridlock trying to get out of the city reminded many of us of a day ten years ago.  Thankfully, we had no damage.

Today, Hurricane Irene has arrived.  It has been raining since 10am and the rain is heavy but the winds are not too bad yet.  We’re expecting the worst of the winds and rain late tonight. As of this writing at 6pm, we still have power. Reagan is apparently ready for a loss of electricity.  Two nights ago she showed up in our bedroom in the middle of the night wearing the headlamp she took to camp.  She wanted to tell us that she had a bad dream.  We’re not sure why, after 10 years, she was suddenly unable to navigate the path from her room to ours in the dark.  Rod has affectionately begun referring to her as “the miner”.     I was at the store earlier today, and judging by the empty shelves, I have concluded that the population of Woodbridge, VA will be dining on bread, potato chips, and milk.  We are well supplied here with much better fare–pizza, chips, salsa, beer, Creole Chicken for my birthday dinner and plenty of ice cream.  One of my favorite stories about hurricane preparations demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of the local government in the city of Washington D.C.  The city was giving out free sandbags to its residents–limit 5 per household.  Are they kidding?  Our turtle sandbox can hold 3!

So we’re here at home making birthday memories together.  I wish Em and Kyle were here too, but I’m looking forward to another round of celebrating with them next week in Cincinnati. I think I’d like to do it without any sort of natural disaster however.