Fay, Fay, Go away...

Rain, Rain,
Go Away,
Come again some other....well...scratch that...
You don't have to come back ever again!

Tropical Storm Fay has hit, and apparenty she likes my little area of Florida so much that she has decided to stay a while - and like a bad houseguest, she just doesn't get the hint when it is time for her to leave. Even though TS Fay was a slow moving storm from the get-go, Fay has seriously not moved all night! It started raining Tuesday morning and with the exception of the couple of hours on Wednesday morning when we were in the eye of the storm, it has rained solidly since. The news is reporting that we have had over 24 inches of rain so far, and there is more to come. A little further south of us has had over 30 inches already! They (the powers-that-be who understand these kinds of things) are now predicting that Fay will (hopefully) have moved on by tomorrow morning, but of course there is no guarantee, she was supposed to have been gone by yesterday after all. And let's not forget that Hurricane Charley a few years ago was supposed to hit Tampa as a Cat 2 but instead turned into a Cat 4 and slammed into Punta Gorda where we were living at the time. Do I seem like a storm magnet or what??

Fay first hit land in the Keys, then it hit land again in Naples, it exited Florida right over myhouse (haha) and is now heading back onto land to hit land just north of here. So far that's 3 landfalls in Florida! The weatherman on TV just posed the question, "Wouldn't it be amazing if it went over into the Gulf and back into the Florida Panhandle?" Uhmm No, amazing wouldn't be my word for it.

My back yard is flooded. Hubby announced that in walking from the porch to the shed this morning water was coming up over his boots (not cowboy boots, but military-style boots so that is still pretty high). On the other end of our yard where it slopes it is probaby at least calf high!


The sides of the road in front of my house have turned into swift moving parallel rivers where you can't tell where the road ends and the ditches begin in many places making most people who drive down my street drive down the middle where they can actually see the road. This is definately a concern for anyone who has to drive. Luckily, school has been canceled for the past 3 days and I just got the notice that it will be closed tomorrow too due to all of the flooding also so I don't have to go anywhere. However, Hubby just took 4 garbage bags of clothes/socks/towels/blankets that we gathers from around our house to the Red Cross so I am hoping that he makes the 4 miles to the center and then home again safely. He wouldn't have gone out at all except that we really felt the Red Cross center could use these things that we aren't using... and he has a big redneck truck haha!




My Aunt and Uncle called us last night to check on us and I assured here that we were doing well and still had power. I may have jinxed myself since not 20 minutes later our power went out and stayed out for nearly 14 hours! Luckily it was night and once we started up our generator (strickly for the fridge so we don't loose all the food we just bought) we were able to sleep through most of it. We camp a lot so we have plenty of flashlights, lanterns, and roughing-it-type-supplies.


Although we have a lot of water in the yard which is driving all the creepy-crawlies into the house, at least we have no damage to the house or vehicles as of yet. Having been through a Cat. 4 not too long ago, this seems like nothing more than a mild annoyance and I thank God that He has spared us one again from any life-threatening situations. It's all in perspective :)