To. The. Stage

10:20 PM

The one with the hurricane and blushing.

As most of you know, Hurricane Ike hit us on Friday night. Angry winds blew and rain not only mercilessly poured, it pillaged several trees, fences as well as the neighbour's chimney. As unfortunate as all these events were, we're okay. Meaning Ranima, Ana, Minky and I. All is well at home save the back fence and the banana tree. The only thing we really lost Friday night was sleep. Oh and electricity. Saturday night, after kidnapping of the birthday girl, we were able to resume our Hurricane/Mischa's Birthday party. Which was surprisingly enjoyable considering there were 8 hot, sweaty, hungry people in an apartment with no electricity and no means to cook anything. Eventually after trawling the streets of dangling traffic lights and fallen street lamps for food, we only managed to find an extremely crowded gas station that was strictly 'Cash Only'. Instead of buying more chips which we did not need, we got Micsha's cigarettes and charged our phones. Bless Tim's heart for driving 4 very un-straight, boisterous young ladies about in the likes of deserted, disorderly 1960, 290, 249 and Barker Cypress.

Eventually the ladies and I ripped two chickens to pieces and prepped them for grilling. Though at this point we were not aware that we had a grill but no coal, which in turn ended up in Nikkii's SAT book in shreds and a huge hairspray flame on the patio. 5 pieces of chicken were prepared, the rest didn't get a chance seeing as to how anyone who'd attempted to cook came back in teary eyed and coughing. 'Never have I ever' was played, which turns out to be a game you use to find out just how slutty someone really is. We eventually got to bed after several hours of silly games. The windows were open for a while, afterwhich it started to rain and had to be shut. Mosquitoes somehow still managed to get into the room and repeatedly bite me on the ass though. Not so fun.

A very quick unanimous decision was made in the morning about going to IHOP for breakfast. Well it was more like this, I woke up, put on Shane's T-shirt and told her, "We are going to IHOP this morning, if you say no I will kill you and eat you" - everyone pretty much jumped on board after that. IHOP could have possibly been the one restaurant open and serving hot food, no doubt they had one thing on the menu and they made you pay at the door. Turned out that a good hot plate of eggs and hash browns was just what everyone needed, bitchy, tired faces were once again replaced with delerious, giggling ones.

There's something liberating about chaos. Among all those dangling traffic lights and broken/ collapsed trees/lamp posts, I found myself having an out of body experience (which was probably a bad idea seeing as to how I was driving and all) I looked around to see my friends, barely clothed, looking and smelling filthy. Dirty fingernails and splashing in puddles (or rather being a whimp about walking in a puddle with fresh fire ant bite wounds and being carried over the puddle) I looked around at all of us, and the general public and thought to myself, how much more gracious and understanding the crisis made people. All that disaster and devastation brought out the kindness in people we fail to see on a day to day basis. Its amazing how being with the right people at the right time can put you in much needed perspective, and as the afternoon sun began to emerge from behind the clouds that littered the sky, it became harder and harder to believe it had ever rained at all.

Monday, September 15, 2008
~Jenny