How To Prepare For a Frankenstorm

"Sandy? What kind of a name for a storm is that? They should just call it Hurricane Frankenstorm," said Jim as we backed out of our driveway to go ride bikes from Bayonne to Jersey City.

(And you thought we were backing out of the driveway with a car loaded with our electronic appliances that actually work, a lot of dark blue t-shirts and Patagonia shorts and pants and sweatshirts, and Thucydides in translation and the OCT, to evacuate.)

Jim and Charlie rode bikes with a mighty wind blowing in the morning. Charlie had lunch, Charlie napped until I woke him for his afternoon meds and after the Big Autism Center alert system had informed us 'closed Monday and Tuesday as this storm is to hit NEW JERSEY on Monday lateish or Tuesday earlierish,' we loaded up the bikes and met a little rain and I dropped off Jim and Charlie in a Bayonne park so the wind would be at their backs and then had to move a Hudson County parks barrier so I could get out of the park back into Kennedy Boulevard.

(Obedient Asian American in me said, wait till those uniformed men come back to move it. Me as I am now said, move it, drive the car through, replace the barrier, get on with life.)

As it turned out, the wind was coming from the north and not just the south so Jim and Charlie got more wind than expected. Liberty State Park itself was closed and I met them at the prearranged alternate location, the parking lot for the Liberty Science Center light rail underneath the turnpike.

We got Vietnamese food (the restaurant owners shrug at weather) and went home, Charlie's stomach settled and we went for a very pleasant walk, noting that the wind inland where we are is not as strong as it had been on the bay, by the Hudson River.

Charlie hung around the kitchen and kept looking at me. Jim and I gave him about 60 million assurances (slight overestimate, in the style of Biblical authors) that he was doing great, we were going to have fun on our unexpected staycation vacation holiday hurricane-ation together. I got Halloween treat bags ready for Charlie's eight classmates (all boys this year; there were two girls in his room last year) and he nibbled at a bag of crackers, ate some apples and went to bed by 10pm.

The wind is getting mightier and louder, it has yet to start raining, there is not an unbought D battery in New Jersey right now.

After weeks and months of insomniac boy -- so that we have grown accustomed to turning off all the lights to urge sleep -- I can navigate this house quite well in the dark. It is a life with Charlie gained skill I had not thought I'd so soon put to practical employment.

Comments

[Alice]

Hope it isn't too bad in your town!

[emma]

Hope everything is okay where you are!

[autismvox]

@Emma, well, lots of trees down and people up the street have no power! But we do -- other parts of NJ got hit really, really hard and who knows when Jim can get back into New York. Watching the skies still.