Staten Island Strong

New Dorp Beach, 2009

The beach we would so frequently sit on is busy with debris, yet at the very same time, left barren from the immense erosion of sand.

The field we would so frequently run in is now being used as a base for the National Guard, the American Red Cross, FEMA, and countless other relief groups.  The neighborhood blocks we would so frequently walk down have been left impassable by the endless bags of garbage - the content of people's homes, destroyed by the ocean, now left at the curb, sopping wet.  Helicopters fly in the skies overhead, starting as early as 7 AM and continuing in to the dark hours of the evening.  Cars line the roads, but most of them are not moving - some fell prey to the storm, others sit idle in a line for gas that stretches nearly a mile.  The roads are street corners are packed full with volunteers, donated clothing, spectators, residents, and the NYPD.

It's bad here.  It's really, really bad here.

Hurricane Sandy has absolutely ravaged my neighborhood.

Those who doubted this storm, those who thought the media was overhyping this storm, were proven very wrong.  Hurricane Irene, which did far more inland damage than it did coastal damage, lulled many people in our beach community in to a false sense of comfort.

Including my family.

In fact, we figured that since my grandma's house always loses power, that we'd bring her to OUR house, a half mile from the beach and in NYC's "Zone A" rather that pack up and go to her house, which is 60 feet or so above sea level, on a hill.

We were smart about one thing, though, and did have things packed up in case we had to leave at the last minute.

Aaaand.. we DID leave at the last minute.

Social media began to buzz after 7 PM on Monday night with reports of the storm surge starting to reach roads and residences.  I found out that a nearby block was under water through Facebook, and the local online news said that people were being rescued off of rooftops just 5 blocks away.

It didn't feel real until I looked out the window and saw what looked like the end of the world - the sky lighting up from transformers exploding, and a mass exodus of cars away from the streets nearer to the beach and closer to higher ground.  Police sirens blared as loud as the wind was blowing.

The final straw was when the water began pouring up my block.  I saw it between my block and the next out on the main road, and that is when I knew that we had to leave.

So, we very quickly packed up a family of four, an 80 - year old grandma, and a cat and a dog in to my dad's crossover, which he conveniently backed up on to my front lawn to avoid the floodwaters, and he drove us to higher ground.

In retrospect, it was a little stupid for us to leave, since it was entirely possible that we would not be able to get out of my neighborhood, and then would have been trapped in the floodwaters.  But, we made it to my grandma's dry, albeit pitch black, house.  My sister, the pets, and I spent the night in my grandma's spare bedroom, on the floor, listening to the wind howl, sandwiched between several layers of blankets.

Fast forward to Tuesday, when I finally arrived home.  The ocean water somehow skipped over my house and stopped dead on my front lawn. We had some damage in the basement from the sewers backing up and spewing filth all over the basement floor.  Some stuff got ruined, but nothing terribly substantial.  Nothing like the devastation experienced elsewhere in my neighborhood.  We were very lucky.

Since I arrived home after dark on Tuesday, I didn't get out to see my community until Wednesday.  It was like a movie.  Literally everyone I knew from my neighborhood was affected in some way.

There doesn't feel like there's an end in sight right now, though I know things will get better.  Already people here have made tremendous progress clearing out their houses, and Sanitation has been doing their best to get the garbage off of our streets.

I've never been one to be ashamed of the fact that I'm from Staten Island, the way some people are.  I've lived here my entire life, in this little house in New Dorp Beach, so one would hope that I like the place! But this week, I'm truly proud to be a Staten Islander.  The support people are giving to one another is amazing and will, no doubt, help us get through this time a little bit easier.

Tropical Assault

I am glad this weekend is over.

I am SO glad this weekend is over.

People across the country are (childishly, if I might add) laughing at the response to a barely-Category 1 hurricane here in New York, but, as a person who has never experienced a hurricane, I will freely admit that I was terrified.

We got word around 2:00 PM on Friday that we would have to evacuate our home by 5:00 PM the next day.  While that left us plenty of time to do whatever we had to do to prepare, I could already feel the environment around me getting more and more hysterical.  I was volunteering in the PT Department at the nursing home at that point and was watching as they brought in old and/or sick evacuees from the hospital, whose walls fell within the dreaded NYC Flood "Zone A."  Hospital beds were being wheeled in to elevators and placed where ever there was room for a patient to ride out the storm. It was unnerving.

The scene became too much for me to deal with, so I headed home without finishing my hours.  I was way too strung up.

I definitely overpacked for both myself and my animals, but I wanted to make sure that I had absolutely everything I needed in the event my house was damaged or we needed to stay out of the area for a long time.  

For the pets, I had..

• 20 cans of food for Layla plus several pounds of dry food
• Enough cat litter for two or three litter changes, plus the litter box
• 15+ pounds of kibble for Marge
• Several bowls and containers for food, water
• Treats and treat-dispensing toys to keep Marge occupied
• Marge's giant soft crate, Layla's carrier, plus a spare 36" wire crate
• Towels, blankets
• Several leashes and collars including THREE collars with identification information
• All of Marge's important paperwork, including my NYC Dog License, vaccination information, and ownership documents
• Photos of both Marge and Layla
• Medicines/supplements for each of them

.. And God knows what else. 

With most of my packing done Friday night, I made the difficult decision to attend the UKC Obedience trial that I had entered for that Saturday.  I only stayed for the first trial, but decided that since the weather was safe and my packing was complete, that it would be mentally beneficial for me to stop worrying and remove myself from the chaos of the incoming storm.   Marge qualified, despite my extreme stress levels, with a 191, for her UKC Companion Dog (U-CD) title.  More on that another time.

I didn't want to leave the trial - I was finally able to relax a bit while there and didn't want to venture back out in to the world.  The Mayor was taking this storm seriously and therefore I was as well.  I knew the possibility of extreme flooding at my house was possible, depending on the size and strength of the storm when it arrived.

When I got home (approximately 1 PM on Saturday), we prepared my house for the storm.  We adorned the basement windows with several towels and taped plastic garbage bags around the inside of them to prevent water from coming in.  My dad boarded them up from the outside.  We moved all of our valuable items in to closets and away from windows.  We disconnected the computers and moved them  off of the basement floor. My mother hunted down sand bags at one of the stores and placed them in the yard around the house.  We taped up the windows to prevent them from shattering if they did, indeed, crack.  We were essentially preparing my house for a worst-case scenario.  Overkill? Maybe.  But I have truly never experienced a feeling quite like that before.  

By about 4 PM, police were blaring sirens in my neighborhood, telling people to GET OUT.  It was starting to rain at that point.  Long story short, by a bit before 6 PM, we (my mom, sister, Marge, Layla, and me) were at my grandmother's house, which was not in a flood zone, with all of our many things.  My dad, as well as several other neighbors, decided to not heed the evacuation warnings and opted to stay with the house.

New York City was already becoming a ghost town.  Most businesses were already closed at that point Mass transit would slow to a halt by the following morning.  The airports were closing.  Bridges and roads were being closed or used only as evacuation routes.

Without getting in to painstaking detail, it was a long night.  In addition to the hurricane drama, my grandmother found out that her brother on the West Coast passed away, which, of course, upset her greatly.  My mom, sister, and me all opted to (not so comfortably) sleep in the same room.  When the lights started to flicker a bit, I opened up Marge's crate and put her in there so I didn't have to worry about knowing where she was if the power went out.  We wound up staying up practically all night, watching the TV and checking for updates on the track of the storm.  Thankfully, we never lost power.  We did feel like we were going to lose our minds.

Around 5:30 AM, being cooped up started to get to Marge.  I let her out and she went absolutely wild.. jumping up, panting, yipping and whining a bit.  I don't know if that was her way of letting us knew that she felt the storm coming or what.  I decided to brave the elements outside at that hour and took her out to pee, on leash.  I was extremely worried about the dog pottying situation, since they predicted several hours with strong winds and heavy rains.

8:00 AM was T-time.  That's when the tide was at its highest and storm surge would be at its peak.  The TV showed video from all over the city of water creeping up on boardwalks, roads, and parking lots near the shore.  It was extremely unsettling.  We spoke to my dad back at home, and he said that there were no water problems; the surge had not reached my block (which is a half mile from the shore).

Conditions started to improve rapidly from there.  Perhaps it was simply because we could exhale a bit after apparently missing the worst of the storm surges that were predicted, but I was definitely much more relaxed at that point.  Aside from a few bands of rain and some wind, things died down.  We were home by about 3:30 PM.

We did have a lot of damage in the borough.  Downed trees, thousands without power, several streets flooded.  My block, as well as my grandma's, was spared from the worst of it.  Thank goodness.  Thank goodness.

On Saturday night, I thought about moving my car in to this driveway.

On Sunday morning, I was glad I didn't!

All of the packing and preparing may not have been put to as much use as we anticipated, but I am glad that we followed the advice of the authorities and got out of our home. I do NOT regret at all taking a few extra safety measures just in case things got bad.  You should always prepare for the worst scenario, not the best one.  That's what we did, and we were lucky to walk away from Irene without any severe damage.  The same cannot be said for some others in our community, our city, and in the neighboring states.  It wasn't a storm to screw around with.

Irene

Well, my worst fear about this storm has pretty much happened, as I am due to evacuate my home before 5 PM tomorrow.  For those who are not familiar, I am on the East Shore of Staten Island, which is one of the boroughs of New York City.  I am a half mile from the Lower New York Bay.

Luckily, my grandmother lives nearby, outside of all evacuation zones.  So that's where we (including Marge and Layla) are heading.

While this evacuation is likely precautionary, I am taking it seriously and starting to round my things up.  Marge's important documents are all in my agility backpack already.  I have stocked up on food for both the cat and the dog, as well as cat litter.  We have tons of bottled water.  I am taking Marge's giant soft crate, my cat's carrier, as well as my spare wire crate with me.

We've experienced lots of bad storms here, but never storms severe enough to warrant the type of evacuations we're currently seeing.  I don't know whether I should be more worried about the wind or the prospect of flooding.

Several bloggers have my contact information, so rest assured that I will be in touch.

Good luck to all of you who are also dealing with this storm.

Snow, Spring and the Semester

Early Spring? I think not!

It's going to have to get pretty darn warm to melt all of this stuff (plus the nice layer of ice that coated everything this morning).

The sad part is that it's not even "useable" snow anymore.  It's now dirty and crusty, which is uncomfortable for dog paws and human feet alike.  I wish there was a magic RESET button that I could press to get a batch of fresh snow for Marge to run around in.  I'd prefer 2 or 3 inches instead of 23 this time, though.

I haven't done a darn thing with Marge this week.  We've gone on a few walks around the block and that's about it.  There's literally no where to walk!

 She did accompany me to the non-competitive agility class which I've begun teaching again on Monday.  She played with the other instructor's dog, a male Standard Poodle.  She snarked him a few times more than I would have preferred, but he seemed to have great manners and read her well, and she did offer him a couple of play bows and zoomed through tunnels with him.  I anticipate that with more play sessions, she'll continue to get more comfortable with him.

I've just gone back to school for the semester and am trying to prepare myself for a wicked semester of Anatomy and Physiology.  I'm taking only two classes, but that's in addition to my lab research (yes, pigeons!), which is proving to be extremely time intensive.  I'm still at my counseling internship, but, quite honestly, am no longer enjoying it and looking to leave soon.  I'm going to be starting volunteer work at a physical therapist's office as well. On top of that, I really need to start studying for the GRE, which I'm planning on taking in a matter of months.  As such, blog updates and visits are going to be all over the place for a while until I settle into my new routine.

Weather Wallop

The snow has been around for so many days now that I can't even remember when these pictures were taken.  Yesterday, I guess?

We got 20+ inches here.. the 6th worst storm all-time in New York City.  Or, if Marge is keeping track, the 6th best storm in NYC history.

She did lots of hopping around in the field.  In the backyard, it was more of a climbing expedition than anything else.

Yep, no shoveling had to be done in my backyard, as snow drifts created a huge bare patch that makes pottying convenient.

Marge says, I peed, I pooped.  Now I have to POSE?!

The front of the house was another story, and my back is still out of whack from the amount of shoveling I did on Monday.  My dad has a snow blower (and probably clocked in about 12+ hours with it), but it's obviously ineffective for the house steps and underneath the tires of my car and stuff like that.

We did have one mishap.. I took Marge out for too, too long of a walk this afternoon around the perimeter of the field, thinking the road would be plowed (it wasn't) and walked so far that I was too exhausted to walk back.  Thankfully, I was very close to a main road, which made it easy for someone to come and pick me up (my dad).  Yeah.. not one of my brightest moments and I shudder to think about what I would have done if I didn't have my cell phone with me!  Marge enjoyed it, though.

I'm kind of ready for it all to go away now.  I like snow because Marge likes it and I'm weird in that I appreciate how full of wrath/power/beauty nature can be, but there is just SO much snow that walking Marge is going to be pretty darn hard for awhile.

Aftermath

Well, the worst of it is over, but we still have yet to see the sun here. What a storm it wound up being! There are still traffic lights out all over the borough, downed trees still blocking roads, and areas that are still flooded and unusable.

Here is the tree that fell on to my grandmother's house on Saturday (photos taken by my sis). Imagine looking out your front window and seeing this! It has since been cleared, but there is some damage to the house that needs to be repaired.

It's still raining on and off, and the wind is still kicking up. Tree services are going around, cutting down the debris with chainsaws, and fire trucks are still blaring constantly. Though we did get out for three walks yesterday, we're taking it easy today. It just seems chaotic out there.

We played a few rounds of "Find-it" with Marge's old squeaky raccoon (that no longer squeaks, of course). It entertained her for a while. She put her thinking-cap on and sniffed all over the room when I gave her the release to find it. At the end of our game, she posed with her prize.

We were supposed to have a private lesson with Marisa today, but, due to damage in the training building from the storm, it was cancelled. Another week of no agility and another bummer. Oh well - we have no choice but to make the best of it!

The Perfect Storm

We're experiencing some of the worst wind I've ever seen in my life. The fence on one side of our house is starting to go, my father says the antenna on top of the house is about to blow off, and, to top it off, my grandmother's enormous pine tree came crashing onto her roof late this afternoon (she's OK, and there probably isn't much damage, but it's still a scare).

The weather normally does not faze Marge, but this storm is bothering her. The wind has been whipping at sustained speeds of 40 mph for the entire day. Potty breaks are NOT fun - she tried to pee before and witnessed a backyard chair get kicked up by the wind. Suffice to say, she is not taking kindly to going out right now, which might become a problem - she's due for a poop.

My family is coming and going from my house, going outside to collect things before they blow away, inspect damage, and the like. I don't like the commotion, and I don't think Marge does, either.

Here's a real-time photo - she's been hunkered down next to me in this corner for the majority of the day. Those are my fleece PJ pants you see there. Notice the ears back and big, sad eyes. I think she wants this to be over with!

For all of you experiencing this storm, be careful! There are road closings, trees down, and power outages all over my city. Stay inside and ride it out safely with your fuzzy friends.

Feel the Warmth

Well, based on the temperatures today, I simply cannot imagine we're going to have much more winter before spring finally hits us.

In one way, this is good - no more snow to complicate walks, travel, and anything else. No more cold nights with the wind howling. No more frozen nose, toes, ears, fingers and feet.

Yet, the warm weather means that we will be, once again, be faced with the warm weather challenges that go along with owning a fearful dog.

Even just in the span of this lone warm day, I've seen so many more people outside of my house and in my neighborhood than I have in the past few months. With that comes noise, too - and we've had a fair share of construction projects around us, and I can almost guarantee that we'll have more.

Marge is faring pretty well so far. The proximity of one of the construction sites to my house has caused a little bit of discomfort for her, and she has had some isolated incidents on walks where some things have made her feel uncomfortable. I'm trying to ensure that she is able to deal with these distractions and stressors now before they hit their peak in the summer. Lots of cookies have been doled out, and I've tried to vary our walking routes a lot so she gets comfortable with different things.

I know that our schedule is going to have to change - aside from the scary stuff, Marge is not a fan of the heat, so our walks are going to be shorter and take place earlier in the day and later in the evening. As long as there are no fireworks (which I'm hoping is at least another few months), our night walks will continue.

She is still getting her L-Theanine supplement, and I don't plan to take it away any time soon. I don't know how much it's helping - my gut tells me it's helping a teeny bit - but I know it's not hurting her. I did speak with the vet a few months ago about possibly medicating her this summer so that we don't have the same relapse that we had last summer.. I'm unsure if that's really necessary or not. Still, I WOULD like to have some alprazolam (Xanax) on hand for her for the really bad days, like July 4th. I am unsure how privy my vet will be to this idea, but I think it is something important to explore.

Today, for the first time in what feels like forever, we made our way down to the beach, just for a few minutes. I remember talking earlier about how glorious the off-season at the beach was going to be for us, and it was. Now, I can't believe that the off-season is almost over, and soon Marge won't be allowed on most of this sand.

So far, the transition from cold to warm is going alright - and I'm going to cross my fingers that it stays that way.

World of White

New York City plunged into whiteness yet again with the second blizzard in two weeks. Totals from early this afternoon were around fifteen inches, but I think it was closer to a foot and a half.

Unlike the last blizzard, this snow was extremely light and fluffy. So, despite the fact that it was over Marge's head in some spots where drifts were high, she fully enjoyed herself running around in it and moved effortlessly through it.

I am absolutely exhausted - I think I shoveled about half a dozen times today - so rather than write, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Trudged To Paradise

It's hard to believe our walk this afternoon took an hour, because we really didn't walk all that far. Plodding through the remnants of a blizzard is tough! But, in the end, it was worth it..

I figured the beach would be deserted, and I was right. (Sorry for the cruddy cell phone pics!) Marge, who walked at a snail's pace through the snow, picked up her heels a little once on the beach. She even had a small burst of zoomies. I actually thought she'd be more energetic than she was, but I'm guessing she was already tired after having to walk the whole way there.

It's not really the amount of snow that's the problem - Marge normally likes running through it - it's the fact that it's crusted (iced?) over on the top. So, sometimes it'll hold your weight, and other times, your leg goes crashing through it. The same happens when you're a dog with four legs - so I'd assume it makes it uncomfortable for little doggy paws to walk across it. Our friend KB mentioned snow shoes, but I don't have any.. it seldom snows this much, and there should be enough melting that we can walk along the grassy side of the road with no issue within a couple of days.

This weekend promises to be busy. We're going to practice some Rally and Agility with a friend of ours on Sunday. Then, on Monday, there are Rally run-throughs AND agility class at my club.. we'll see how much we get done, but I'm most excited for class.

Snow Legs

Yeah.. looks like walks are going to be tough for a while. The final snow total was seventeen inches.

There are mountains of snow seemingly everywhere. Our front lawn has been turned into a mountain range - there's just no where else to put it all.

The roads were SO bad last night that even the snow plows (ie. NYC garbage trucks with a big shovel on the front) couldn't get by without issue. My dad's car's door now has a huge dent in it; thankfully, the car was parked, so no one was hurt. Yep.. we were outside last night at 2 AM waiting for the police to come to fill out a report. The cop who came was the definition of NASTY, too.

There is almost no way to get across the street to go romp in the field, as the snow banks are about two feet high, three feet wide, and absolutely filthy. We managed to fumble over it, as Marge has been cooped up for what seems like an eternity. But, the snow was both high and rough on the top (I guess it iced over) so it was really hard for her to walk.

Needless to say, we turned for home after a few minutes of Marge trying to swim her way through the snow. I guess we'll have to entertain ourselves mostly indoors for the next few days.

Snowstorm

Sorry for lack of an interesting title, but I couldn't think of anything more descriptive to introduce these pictures from yesterday's snow.

We've been laying low this weekend... much to Marge's dismay. The beginnings of a cold have scared me inside. In the mean time, Marge is enjoying her dinner inside her Kibble Nibble and I'm pretending to do school work.