I'm home.

I'm back. Safe. A bit frazzled, but home safe. To all of you wishing me a good time, thanks - too bad it was the vacation from hell.

To Sue who believes that I'm an idiot: fuck off. Spend $1,500 non-refundable dollars on a vacation and then decide whether you'd like to flush it down the drain or else wait out the storm. I feel like I need to address this because I'm sure some of you are wondering. I don't like getting confrontational on my own blog because I can simply delete the offending comments, but I've had the week from hell and I'm not in the mood for insensitive assholes who don't know the ins and outs of a situation.

It was a "voluntary" evacuation, which basically means that if you had somewhere to be during or after the time of the storm then YOU SHOULD LEAVE because there would be no guarantees you would have a means out when you needed one. We had nowhere to be until Monday of next week. You should also know that during the time of the suggested evacuation, Ophelia was merely a tropical storm. I've lived through a countless number of these and know what the risks are. I'm a North Carolinian. I know what it's like to expect to wake up the next morning and have to drag fallen trees off your yard.

Ophelia didn't get upgraded back to a hurricane until AFTER the ferries off the island had been shut down. If you had read all the entries, you would see that there was a point where we were making a genuine effort to leave. I wasn't afraid of the fucking storm - I just felt that I could be watching television and playing board games in MY OWN DAMN HOUSE because that's all we'd been doing. The beach was too windy to use and the pool was too cold.

The very next day after the storm, I saw even MORE guests to the island than we saw in the two days preceeding it. These are people who own homes there and judged that it was a safe place to be. While the storm did flood some roads on the island and made hot meals impossible for a day and a half, at no point were we ever told that it was unsafe to be there. We were advised by the owners of the home that the house was built for those sorts of conditions. It is a beach house, after all.

I fully expected someone to be plastering nasty little Katrina reminders on my blog and talking all kinds of shit about the fact that I should have learned a lesson from that. But, you know what - those of you who are long-time readers of this magic carpet ride called Blown Fuse know that I have common sense. I would never put myself or my spouse in a predicament that would be considered in any way dangerous. While we were right in the path or the storm and were hounded by it for FOUR WHOLE DAYS and had to deal with the house taking on water from the roof and windows, the most harmful thing that happened was that I caught a cold.

Would I choose to stay next time? Absolutely. Now, I'm starving and want a hot meal. I would also like to spend some quality time with my cat who seems to be attention-starved and skinnier than I left her. I'll be back in a few hours to post the pictures that weren't taken with my camera phone.

Posted by Tiffany at September 16, 2005 05:00 PM | TrackBack