"Ike is coming to Houston and there is little chance that it will miss", a poetic paraphrasing of the message from my email buddy PHD in Meteorology from MIT, which gave me the inevitable news with one day to go before Ike made landfall. I was paralyzed with fear; so I worked, because work is therapy for me. I use artistry, pshycology, and research in creating and materializing my vision. My vision was cloudy that day.
After a full day of work, I put in a full night of preparing for IKE. I made my list; a sample of which follows:
#3- Pick up Bocci balls left on the lawn from the last party.
#12- Trash/recycle the empty cans of Pittsburgh semitransparent fence stain the painters disposed of 2 years ago behind the A/C units.
#15- Move the giant -and I MEAN giant at 2feet in length and 6inches in diameter- steel bolt that my friend Karen left me as a present, from the side of the pool into the herb garden so that it doesn't float into the pool
#20- Try to lock the antique bronze gates into the entry courtyard, dating from the Peron era in Argentina-with the original bullet holes to prove it- with the most random of antique keys which does not belong to the doors.
#21- Try to unlock the antique bronze gates in case we need to flee
#24- Find the smallest of phillips head screw driver to insert rechargeable batteries into my 4 Casa Concept solar LED lamps and place on the window sill while there is still sunlight.
Like my friend Karen said about moving to NYC, "you can't make this stuff up".
I kept my list, perhaps to laugh later, or to reuse it next year. It took me all night to come up with the 49 preparation items, but-hands down- it was the 4 solar lamps that made our life safer and better. With 7 hours of light every night, that saw us through that harrowing long night of IKE and through the next 6 days without electricity, we now swear by our lamps. Visit our webstore.
