Hurricane Irene Slams East Coast

"... and so, instead of heffalumps and woozles, the blustery day turned into a blustery night." ~ Winnie the Pooh

The news channel was reporting a nightmare. Aerial images of Hurricane Irene looked like the sky in the film “Independence Day.” I was babysitting with the grandchildren. They were scared, so I turned off the TV for a while. There were several emergency trips to the bathroom. Yellow journalists from as far away as Seattle, were taking pictures of downed trees in Hoboken, NJ.

I spotted a family of ducks running for their lives:




Storm damage in Central Park amounted to a pile of pine nuts and fallen cones:



Each of our vehicles was equipped with a window punch, batteries, flashlight, cases of bottled water, and giant boxes of Cheerios from Sam’s Club in case of a flash flood. The Jiffy peanut butter took the back seat.

All the airports and public transportation were closed.

I said a quick prayer to St. Anthony of Padua; I hadn’t been able to find my dentures for two days. I finally found them in the fish aquarium. No, the lights were not out; in my haste, I missed the cup.

The Angel fish were getting high on Fixodent. They were performing more aerial maneuvers than Asian carp. I was nervous as a cat, but not strung out like a chihuahua yet, and the kids were terrorized.

I didn’t know what else to do, we watched “Charlie Bit My Finger” 25 times on YouTube already, so I made up a Pooh story. I didn’t end the story. I told the kids we would do that in the morning. I was considering three endings. One of them involved Noah’s Ark, another how Piglet forgot to waterproof the house; finally, the blustery day.

This morning, I logged on to Facebook to find out if my friends were still alive. They are!

The kids are eating omelets, “Charlie Bit My Finger” is playing on the PC, and “Baby Monkey Riding Backwards on a Pig” is our family theme song of the day.