Saturday, September 4, 2004

Hurricanes...

Well, this hurricane season is already starting to be different than any other that we have been through yet. August 12th, Hurricane Charley starting making his way towards us. We were all getting prepared for the worst, since he was supposed to hit on Tampa Bay and go across the state. After work was over, everyone went their separate ways to try and make their love ones and possessions as safe as possible. When I got home we started our hurricane prepardness by bringing everything we could find outside, in. Then the neighbors next door, Jim and Holly, were kind enough to lend us there fencing to board up our windows. We also helped them put up the fencing up onto their windows as well. Neighbors from across the street, came across to help us out. We bought water, food, batteries and anything else that we thought we might need. Will it be enough, we hoped so. While doing our storm watching, Charley decided to turn at the last minute and instead of hitting the Tampa Bay side where everyone was prepared that it was going to hit, he decided to hit at Ponte Gorda (south of Tampa) and cut across towards Orlando, Kissimmee and St. Cloud. The problem there is that no one thought it would hit there and not many people were prepared for him to visit their end of town. Homes were devastated, trees were torn out from the ground, roots and all, it was something that hadn't been seen in the areas that it went through in a long time. We were the 'lucky' ones. We received the tornadoes, heavy rain and not much else. A fellow co-worker in St. Cloud had trees come down at his house, power outage for a while, but thankfully all is okay.

A fellow co-worker of my husbands had lost power for over 10 days and lost part of her roof of her house...but on the bright side she found two baby squirrels to take care of. Unfortunately one past away, but the other is still doing great. She brings it to work and feeds him with an eye dropper and is helping him along since his parents are no where to be found.

At my office, we had minimal damage...but our fabrication shop in Lake Wales is a totally different story. The roof caved in and blew away and all of the equipment was exposed to the weather. Our guys had to pull everything we could from there and bring it up to our Disney office to keep it from getting stolen.Even though there were SO MANY bad stories and things happening to so many people...there were so many things that I found to be so sweet during this catastrophe. People seemed to have been even nicer than usual to each other. Neighbors came out and helped everyone who needed it like they were part of their family. One woman we knew lost all of her supplies to craft with along with most of her apartment, and our crafting group decided to send anything and everything her way to help her out.

After Charley, my husband and I decided that we were so lucky to have not been hit directly with the hurricane but wondered what would happen when the next one came along. So we ordered a generator, a window air conditioner, more flashlights, batteries, all the plywood for each window all labeled and bolts in the house for the wood...and wat do you know, another hurricane is on its way.Hurricane Frances is hitting now as I speak, it has reached the coast and is going so slow that it will last all weekend. This hurricane we are ready for. We have prepared as much as we can and that's all that we can do. Frances is bigger than the whole state of Florida, so everyone is going to feel this one wherever they are. Again, the neighbors and friends and family have been so supportive to each other. Helping out whenever and wherever they can. In my mind, I wish that everyone would be this close all the time, but am so grateful that we come together when we need to. I am sure that I will be adding on to this entry...but for right now I will leave it as it is. I just pray that everyone is safe and okay when this is all over. My thoughts are with everyone. Take care!


Saturday, May 22, 2004

An Old and New Love...

First and foremost, BASEBALL SEASON HAS BEGUN! Do I sound a little excited? I happen to be one of those girls that just love hanging out, playing on the computer or creating artwork and having a baseball game playing in the background. The little stories that the announcers have to tell, the crack of the bats, the screaming fans...all sweet music to my ears. I can say that this love of the sport comes from my dear, dear grandmother Esther. She was an original Brooklyn Dodger fan till they moved and broke her heart. The stories she would tell me of how much it cost to go to a game and how much fun she would have seemed to seep into my heart and turned me into a baseball fan at a young age. When I started my love affair with baseball, 'Nanny' (as I called her) was a huge New York Mets fan. Since we lived in Brooklyn back then, Nanny decided that the N.Y. Mets would be her team since they were close to home. The N.Y. Yankees were in the Bronx and she thought that that was way too far away to give her allegiance to. So the Mets it was. I remember her listening to them on the radio when they were not playing on TV and would love to listen to every move they made while playing solitaire in the kitchen. Those were the days. Nanny and I were so happy when the Amazin' Mets won the World Series back in the 80's and she knew they could do it all along. She was their biggest fan. Even when they were the worst team, she was still there behind them all along.Well, I now have to admit that my allegiance has changed from the NY Mets to the NY Yankees many years ago and there has been no looking back. I don't think Nanny would disapprove since she would just be happy that I still love the sport of baseball as she did. I will watch any and every game on, whether the NY Yankees are playing or not. My husband thinks that it is great that his wife knows so much about baseball and will ask me stats before checking on the ESPN website which honestly, makes me pretty proud. I know that this love affair with the sport will not bring me wealth or help me in case of emergency, but a part of me thinks that it will always keep me with my grandmother and that is something that I never want to lose or live without.

The next major event that has been going on in my world is the complete re-vamping of my home. You can tell that spring is in the air here in our house in Florida, which is really weird because isn't it always spring here??? I mean weather-wise? LOL!!! Jeff (my other half) and I have moved into our own first house back in 2001. 10 days after 9/11. And at the time I felt regretful for being happy while the world was falling apart around us. I now am more ecstatic than you will ever know for having our own little piece of the earth that we call home. It has made me whole and complete to know that this is mine and no one can take it away from us. The strong feelings around this is because throughout my childhood, our family moved around A LOT! And that is actually an understatement. Then when Jeff and I got married, we moved from NY to FL into an apartment. Two years later we moved to a better place, but it was still another apartment. Finally, we planted roots here and I never want to leave. We were lucky enough to have bought a brand new house that we got to see built from the ground up and would visit every weekend to see the new additions made each time.

Well, now that we have lived here for almost three years, we have decided to rip up all of the carpet (that the dogs helped with - that's another story) and tile the floors. We did have someone help us in the beginning to do our kitchen, living room, main bathroom and foyers. To say the least it was a learning experience. I do have to say that it looks absolutely wonderful! We went from medium gray carpet to a white with light gray tile and boy has it brightened the house up. It also looks bigger. While doing these rooms floor over, we also figured we might as well paint too. Hey, why not? LOL!! After this was all done, we found that we had so much tile left over that we can tile some more...this brought on the new job of tiling the backyard porch. We decided to do this part of the home improvements all on our own. We finished this episode last weekend and all I can say is WOW!!! I am not one to pat myself on the back, but we deserve it on this! Now you can call us gluttons for punishment, but we still had so much more tile left that now we have decided to do my Craft/Office. I have just finished painting the walls, and if you know me at all you'd know that the color blue is what I wound up with. The tiling will begin on Sunday since we have a birthday party tomorrow and doubt if any time will be allotted for anything else but cleaning and partying. But I do know that we are so ahead of schedule right now that I think we may have it all done before Memorial Day weekend. Which means that Jeff and I can actually relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor for the nice, long weekend ahead of us. I do have to admit that even though I was rather hesitant to start this whole project of tiling and painting from the beginning...I am very, very happy that we have done it. Not only does the floor look great and make the house look larger, the coolness under your feet is great to have when the Floridian weather gets up in temperature. I also know by the way that the dogs seem to sleep on the floors more, that they are enjoying the new flooring as well. The other good thing is that we have been spring cleaning all along the renovation. So it has just been great all around.