Today is my kids’ first day of school since Hurricane – they have missed a full week of school. Things aren’t quite normal yet, because some of the homes – and one of the schools – don’t have power yet. My daughters’ school is open, but our school district’s middle school students will be going to school at the high school today, since the middle school is still without power.
My area of New Jersey didn’t get hit anywhere near as badly as the New Jersey shore did, but there are a lot of downed trees and utility poles, and of course, some of my community is still without heat and power.
Teaming Up
My house didn’t get damaged too badly from the storm. But, we did lose some flashing from the roof, which seems to happen during any windy storm. (The builder who built our house didn’t put up the flashing well.) A few of our neighbors also lost their flashing during last week’s storm, so I have teamed up with a few of the moms on our block and hired my local handyman to do the job. He wouldn’t normally do the job, but since he will be working on a few houses in a day, he agreed to come out. Otherwise, my neighbors and I would have had to pay a lot more to have a roofer do the job.
Privacy Gone
The damage I am most upset about, however, is that the storm did some damage to the privacy tarps that I had hung on the fence that separates my yard from the schoolyard behind my house. The tarps were getting blown around by the hurricane, so my husband had to cut them down during the middle of the storm. We will have to replace one of the tarps because the winds shredded one of them. I am missing the privacy that the tarps provided, but because the Northeast is due to have another storm this week, I am not planning to put the tarps back up anytime soon.
Helping Others
While my area will be back to normal fairly soon, it will take a lot of work and funds to get the New Jersey shore back to what it once was – many of our state’s seaside towns were flooded during the hurricane, and many boardwalks were washed away. So, I am plan to visit the Red Cross’ website, www.redcross.org, to add my donation to the organization’s Hurricane Sandy charitable efforts, for I know just in New Jersey alone, there is a lot to be done! I hope you can help out, too!
It’s amazing what a storm can do. I think you came off pretty lucky, and it’s great that your neighbors banded together to get some minor damage repaired. Funny thing – this reminded me of the last tornado we had. Somehow, the tornado managed to wrap our trampoline around our neighbor’s tree on the other side of the fence…without even damaging the fence.
Thanks for your comment, Brandon! We don’t often get tornados around here, but the hurricane was scary enough! Glad you only lost a trampoline. Thanks for the visit!