Friday, November 2, 2012

Sandy Claws

We are fine, first of all. We were evacuated from our home on Monday and drove through the beginnings of the storm to Pennsylvania where we've been until now. My sister's family and my parents went back Tuesday to assess the damage to the house. We had about 4-5 ft. of water in the basement. (The basement where Greg and I stored all our stuff :(  )

Luckily we had just unpacked a ton of boxes so the damage was not as bad as it could have been. The loss of our stuff is not so much about money, or the stuff itself, but sort of what it represented to me. Greg is almost happy, to him having too much is just a burden. But for me, a little stockpile is a security blanket; one that has been swiftly ripped away.

It turns out we have renter's insurance. We will easily reach the limit. I'm making a list of our belongings and what it would cost to replace them, but I know that if we get any money it will just go toward paying off debt. It's not the worst trade off really.

These days in the hotel have been odd. I can't sleep with worrying about our friends back in NJ, although it seems now that everyone is ok, at least physically. I want desperately to work at something, to clean, to fix, to prepare. But I also know that I can't bring my kids back to a house that's full of sewage. I want to pretend like we're just on vacation, that everything is fine; but I also feel guilty that we are clean, warm, and fed, when others are in such bad situations.

The plan is to go back tomorrow. We will see.