Hello, friends! I am back with part two of my Hurricane Irma lessons. Here in Tampa, we are definitely still thinking about this hurricane, especially considering some people in the area just got their power restored. It’s on everyone’s minds and it’s all everyone wants to talk about. When I was at the hair salon this weekend, I talked to my hair stylist about it. When I was out to dinner on Saturday night, I heard the people around me talking about it. When I was at the grocery store, I heard people talking about it. It’s permeating our every conversation. But there’s a camaraderie to it. We’re in this together. We’re fine. We made it.

Here are some of the other lessons I learned from Irma:

11) Hurricanes are emotionally exhausting. I can’t deny how emotionally exhausted I was after going through Irma. It was hard to give myself grace to feel this emotion because I got really lucky. My home was not damaged and even though I lost power, I just stayed with my mom for a few days, which honestly wasn’t a big deal. Yeah, it sucked not being in my own space, but it’s not like other friends who were staying with friends and feeling totally misplaced. But I am allowed to feel drained after dealing with the anxiety of this storm. A Cat 3 hurricane is no joke and our city is not prepared for something like that. (See: this Washington Post article.) I was terrified of what my apartment was going to look like, of what our city was going to look like, of how we would rebuild. And coming down from that level of anxiety would drain any normal person. It’s okay that it’s taken me up until this week to finally start to feel a semblance of normalcy.

12) It’s not as simple as “just evacuate.” If you’ve never actually been through a hurricane, then I beg of you, please stop pretending you know what it means to evacuate. You have no idea. It may seem like an easy decision, but it’s not. If you have pets, you have to either find family to stay with or a pet-friendly hotel or a pet-friendly shelter. You have to deal with stand-still traffic on the roads and find gas stations that still have gas. You have to board up your house and protect your valuables. You have to prepare as if you won’t have a home to come back to. And speaking of hotels? By Thursday, just about everything in Florida and Georgia was booked. It is actually a really difficult decision to decide whether or not to evacuate. There are a lot of factors that come into play. I’m definitely not commending people who lived on the beach and decided to “ride out the storm,” because no. If you were under mandatory evacuation, you should have done everything in your power to evacuate. But I also want people to understand that the decision is not an easy one.

13) I live 5 feet above sea level. That was fun to find out, when the storm surges were estimated to be 10 feet or higher, and I live right by the gulf. The price of living in paradise?

14) I would never, ever, ever leave Dutch. One of the sadder realities of hurricanes is how many pet owners leave their dogs to fend for themselves. There were reports of some owners in Florida tying their dogs up outside. It was unfathomable to think of ever leaving Dutch. As a pet owner, I have been entrusted to his care. He depends on me for everything and to break that trust, to just leave him during something as scary as a hurricane, is something I would never do. We’re a package deal. If I couldn’t find a shelter or a hotel that would allow him, I would have made other arrangements. There is never a good reason to leave your pet. Ever. If you want to have a dog, you have to take care of that dog always.

15) Another benefit of renting an apartment: cleaning up hurricane debris is not my responsibility! The area outside my apartment building was filled with debris. We had some downed trees and there was so much debris in the road circling my apartment complex that I could barely make out the color of the concrete. And none of that was my responsibility! While all of my friends were posting about cleaning up their yards filled with debris from the hurricane, I was tucked away inside, reading or napping. Muahahaha!

16) I will wait in line for 30 minutes for Chick-Fil-A. Oh, yes I will. Chick-Fil-A opened up on Tuesday (after being closed since Saturday), but only for drive-thru customers. The line was wrapped around the building twice, but you best believe I got my car in line and waited patiently for my turn. And that meal was the best I’ve had in a while, no joke.

17) Restaurants and grocery stores have limited options following a hurricane. It’s been interesting watching my community try to get back to a place of normalcy following the threat of Hurricane Irma. From Saturday until Tuesday (and, for some places, Wednesday), everything was closed. On Saturday afternoon, my mom and I tried to find something open for lunch and we couldn’t find a single place! Not even McDonald’s! And I’m not complaining because I’m glad these restaurants took precautions and closed so that the employees could evacuate and be with their families. It’s just interesting. Places slowly started opening up on Tuesday. I couldn’t find an open Starbucks, but Carrabba’s (an Italian chain) opened up with a limited menu on Tuesday and Publix was also open, albeit with bare shelves in some parts of the store. The limitations come from the fact that these restaurants and stores weren’t getting their normal deliveries due to the storm, so they could only offer what they had on hand. It’s crazy times! I can’t imagine what life would look like if the storm actually had hit us as a Category 3, though.

18) The reason it’s so important to keep a full tank before a storm: gas stations will be closed. Since I wasn’t planning on leaving the area, I wasn’t as concerned with keeping a full tank of gas in my car. But on Thursday evening, following a class at the gym, I found an open gas station that didn’t have any waiting, so I decided to just top off my tank. At that point, I had about a half-tank of gas, but figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And I’m so glad I did that because gas options were so limited following the hurricane! As of Friday, there were only one or two open stations around me. Everything else was still closed. Now I know: fill up that tank, even if you don’t plan on leaving the area!

19) There’s something apocalyptic about empty parking lots and roads on a Saturday night. Saturday night was when my anxiety ramped up severely because we were getting tracks from the meteorologists that showed the hurricane hitting our area directly. So basically everyone in my area evacuated that day if they hadn’t already. This led to empty roads and parking lots and there’s something super creepy about that. I went outside with Dutch on Saturday evening and it was silent. I was at my mom’s at this time and she lives right next to a major highway, so I never hear silence outside of her apartment. Even the parking lot at her apartment was nearly empty. It really did not help the anxiety I was already feeling!

20) Being with my mom was the best antidote to all my stress and anxiety. Man, I may be almost 30 years old but I still want to be around my mom when I’m going through something as stressful as a hurricane. I was happy that we decided to ride out the storm together and it really helped me to have a feeling of calm. Plus, being with her, I didn’t have to worry about her well-being. We were together and that put me at ease. There’s nobody else I’d want to experience a hurricane with!

What was the last natural disaster you’ve been through (if any!)?

Well, I didn’t mean to go MIA for a week after being gone for the month of August, but those who follow me on social media knew I had a good reason for that: Hurricane Irma! This hurricane had everyone in the entire state of Florida scrambling – loading up on non-perishable food, boarding up their homes, filling up their tanks with gas, and making evacuation plans. Hurricane Irma, at one point, was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean and after ravaging some of the smaller islands in the Caribbean, it made landfall in Florida last Sunday, as a Category 4 storm in the Florida Keys. From there, the hurricane traveled up the west coast of Florida, gradually shifting to the east and weakening. Early Monday morning, the hurricane swept past Tampa (its eye-wall was just to the east of us) as a Category 1 hurricane.

Throughout the week, the storm track kept shifting. First, it was going to hit the west coast and then the east coast, and by Saturday, the track had the storm hitting the Tampa Bay area directly as a Category 3 hurricane – the likes of which none of us living here had ever seen in our lifetime. Yes, as a lifetime Floridian, I am well accustomed to hurricanes, but the truth is, the Tampa area has been extremely lucky and hasn’t been directly hit since the 1920s! I’ve never had to truly make evacuation plans (nor have I ever been under a mandatory evacuation, like I was with Hurricane Irma), so this was really a new experience for me. Somehow, Tampa continues to get lucky when it comes to hurricanes and it’s a good thing because our city is really not prepared for them. I mean, the roads here flood after a simple rainstorm! I can’t imagine the damage a Category 3 hurricane would cause.

In any event, my mom and I had tentative plans to ride out the storm at her work, if we needed to. Her building was built recently and can withstand a Category 5 hurricane, and they were allowing pets to stay, so that was our worst-case scenario plan. Other family members in the area traveled to Georgia to stay with my aunt and uncle (at one point, they had 11 people and 7 dogs!) while my brother and his family went to Kissimmee to ride out the storm with my sister-in-law’s family. On Saturday morning, the area where my mom lives was called for a mandatory evacuation, so the plan was set: we would ride out the storm at her work. And that’s what we did – packing up the car early Sunday morning and spending the day just kicking back there. I tried to read, did some freelance work, and spent a lot of time hanging out with Dutch and the other dogs. (The pets had to stay in a stairwell, and Dutch did fine there!) I also made sure to go outside often to take videos because I knew this was something I wanted to capture and remember.

So that explains my absence from the blogging world last week. Thankfully, my home is fine and while I was without power until Thursday, I was able to stay with my mom who never lost power (or Internet!). Things feel like they are beginning to return to normal, but other parts of Florida have just begun the rebuilding process and my heart breaks for the damage this storm has caused to the Keys and Naples.

After the storm passed, I started compiling a list of everything I learned during the storm and, well, it turned out to be a lot. More than I should put in one post. So I’ll be splitting this up into two posts, which sorta feels like overkill, but what can I say? I am wordy!

1) Dutch can fit inside a guinea pig crate. Early last week, my mom informed me that Dutch would have to be crated if he was going to go to my mom’s work. Dutch has never been crated with me (he was fully house-trained when we got him), so I needed to buy one. But at that point, it didn’t feel likely that we were going to need to evacuate, so I put it off until Thursday when I realized we probably needed to prepare to evacuate. So, I went to PetSmart… only to find out that all of their crates were gone. (Of course!) The only one available was one of those massive crates for $160. I asked one of the employees about their crates and she directed me to a guinea pig cage and said it might work for a small dog like Dutch. It ended up being the PERFECT size for Dutch.

2) You need more than non-perishables. I went to the grocery store on Tuesday, armed with a list of “what to buy during a hurricane,” and bought a ton of snacky non-perishables (cookies, crackers, granola bars, beef jerky, tuna fish, etc.) Anything that wouldn’t need to be refrigerated and would be able to eat without using power. Well, I didn’t exactly think about the time before the hurricane hit, when we still had power and could cook and keep food cold. Our city basically shut down starting on Saturday up until Tuesday, so we were stuck with what we had left in our cabinets, fridge, and freezer. I should have prepared better by cooking some hearty meals that could be popped into the microwave to heat up while we were at my mom’s work. We made it work, but our meals were rather sad on Sunday and Monday.

3) Group text messages with friends are a godsend. I had two group text messages going during the storm – one with my book club girls and one with my coworkers. They were a godsend, especially my book club ladies because many of us were anxious and fearful and my friend, M., helped calm us down with her more pragmatic approach to the storm. At one point, I was having panic attacks about still being at home when it felt like everyone around me had evacuated I texted them and they calmed me down. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without those group threads!

4) I have so many people in my corner. One of the more amazing things I experienced from Hurricane Irma was the outpouring of love and support from all over. Friends reaching out to me to make sure I’m okay and asking if there was anything they could do meant the world to me. There’s something comforting knowing that I’ve got people in my corner, people who are concerned for my well-being, Dutch’s well-being, and my family’s well-being.

5) I did not need four cases of water. Oh, boy, I went a little crazy-train with buying water once it became certain we were going to get hit by this hurricane. I went to Publix on Tuesday afternoon and bought four cases… and I did not need that many cases of water. Oh, well, better safe than sorry, right?

6) I cannot read when I’m stressed out. I had hoped to get a lot of reading done before, during, and after the storm, but it just didn’t happen. I was too anxious and stressed out before the storm hit to focus on reading, so I basically just refreshed my social media feeds and talked to friends. I didn’t even read a ton when we were at my mom’s work to ride out the storm. I did some freelance writing, Mom and I played some games, we took a long walk around her parking garage, and the rest of the time was spent checking on Dutch, walking him, feeding him, etc. My reading has picked up a little after the storm passed, but man, reading is difficult when I’m stressed out!

7) We have the best meteorologists in Tampa. Honestly, we do. Between Denis Phillips’s calm and informative updates and Paul Dellegato’s more nuanced take on the storm, I always knew what was going on and what the effect would be for our area. They helped me feel prepared for whatever would happen and I am so thankful for the hard work of all our area meteorologists – they truly put in so much work to keep us informed.

8) The Tampa Bay area is amazing. You know, Florida gets a lot of shit from people who live in other states. I recently listened to a podcast where someone was like, “Ew, Florida, why are you going there?” and I immediately wanted to delete the podcast from my feed. (Seriously, guys, it’s not funny anymore. Get some new jokes!) But you know what? Florida and the Tampa Bay area in general are amazing. It was incredible to see how our community came together during this storm. So many people opened up their homes to those in flood zones (and afterward when millions of Floridians were without power for days). I saw a woman in Publix share her cart with another woman. A local shop gave away free plywood to people in need. Restaurants were sending customers home with bags of ice to keep their food cold if they had lost power. We came together and it was a beautiful thing.

9) I will buy the shit out of some hurricane snacks. Cookies, Little Debbie snacks, Cheetos, white cheddar popcorn, Oreos, M&M’s… oh boy, I’m going to need a sugar fast after this hurricane. Hurricane snacks are a real thing and it’s amazing how I reverted to a five-year-old when buying them. I just wanted all of the sugar because I knew that if I was going to be stuck inside for days at a time, I’d want comfort food.

10) It’s amazing to be so close to Mother Nature’s fury. Throughout the day, I took videos of what was happening outside. The winds started around 23 mph in the morning and steadily increased – in the last video I took (around 9:45pm), they were around 45 mph. It was both horrifying and awe-inspiring to be so close to Mother Nature’s fury and to realize what a tiny person you are in this universe. Mother Nature is going to do what she wants to do and there is truly nothing you can do to stop it. I think that’s what is so scary about natural disasters – it reminds you that we are tiny human beings on a big bad planet.