As a former Galvestonian, hurricanes–no matter how big, small, far or near–are a big deal. It’s ingrained in me. If there’s a storm in the Gulf, I must know what it’s doing at all times. My house growing up wasn’t protected by the seawall, and my family was frequently in the mandatory evacuation zone. Even though we now live far enough inland that it would take one heck of a hurricane to make us evacuate, I can’t help myself.
So, after two days of watching Hurricane Alex blow into the Gulf, we were all a bit crazy. The kids had cabin fever from three days of rain. I was crazy from studying hurricane models and Extreme Weather updates. M was crazy from watching the outer bands of Alex hit Houston, in what turned out to be a steady stream of rain, rain, rain.
We decided to “evacuate” to Lost Pines, this resort outside of Austin. And even though I was contracting every 40 minutes, and the resort was a solid two hours from my doctor, evacuating from a hurricane that never really hit Houston was one of our best crazy ideas.
Continuing with the crazy like a hurricane theme, we had a very fun 24 hours. We let the kids stay up way too late, eat too many s’mores–and then spend the better part of the evening rolling down a hill.
The most surprising part of the trip came when I got home and looked at the pictures we took. I thought I was taking it easy to not go into labor. Then we would really be the crazy people who evacuated a hurricane that had already past and didn’t really hit our city anyway only to go into labor. But in almost every picture I’m either picking up a kid or bending over.
But maybe that was part of my subconscious plan…our son could be born on a hill in the hill country, on the 4th of July, while we were evacuating the year’s first hurricane.
Oh well. There’s always Bonnie.