Hurricanes Suck

Hurricanes fucking suck.

It's been years since we'd been hit hard with a storm, so when Irma was coming in hot we were a little irritated. Weekend plans totally ruined. Yard is gonna flood, just one big inconvenience.

I was feeling pretty calm, mainly because we've been through this song and dance many times before. We are Floridians, we got this.

Then it started to get a little crazy, rapidly increasing in category, so Blas was going to make me go to his dad's house for the duration. 

Joey, calm as a cucumber, as mama panics

Being the stubborn woman I am, I refused to leave. I just packed up some essentials just in case we had to make a last minute dash, then we all camped out in the front room for the duration.

Everything seemed pretty mundane for a hurricane. Lots of wind, very little rain. We spent most of the evening joking around, watching the news, even cooking dinner (the power went out right as we finished). After it got dark we hit the living room to ride things out. Power would be back on in several days, things were gonna be ok.

Then, at around two in the morning, the house fucking shook. 

For the second time in a month, I questioned if I was going to live to see the next day. I had no idea what the hell had just happened, or if the roof was about to come off because of how bad the winds were.

A pine fell onto the back of the house, on the bedroom where Joey and I would have been sleeping had Blas not made us come into the front room with him.

For the rest of the night I was paranoid, but finally managed to get a little sleep at about five in the morning.

The next day we got up to survey the damage.

The tree separated the plywood up on the roof and now I have lovely hole. That thing runs from the back wall several feet in. When it rains it sounds like a waterfall in there.

 

The tree is MASSIVE. It's survived many a hurricane but this stupid one took it down? 

I still don't have a corner of my roof, btw, because FEMA only gave me a grand, which isn't enough to get someone to do it so we have to do it ourselves.

It's January and we are still sleeping in the living room. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have an infant.

Luckily a girlfriend of mine gave me her mattress because she moved recently. So my living room looks like a bedroom. I just miss having my own personal space. I miss the privacy of having my own room.

Since it's been so long the problem has gotten worse, but my boyfriend only has one day off a week at most, and then he works ten hour days at the restaurant the rest of the week. Little by little he's been cutting back the tree, which has to go before we can do much else, but now half of the ceiling in the room has molded and I've lost some belongings in there to water damage.

The outside does look much better, though, because of how much he's cut the tree back.

It's really shown me how little I need to live, so when we do get moved back in I'll probably end up getting rid of a lot of what's in there. I haven't touched much of it in months so I suppose I don't need it!

What makes things worse is this kills my depression, and when my depression is in full force I don't want to do anything. I take care of the baby, yeah, but other than that? I don't have the motivation. This is how my mind works - half of the house is jacked up, so what's it going to hurt for more of it to be messed up?

It makes me feel like a totally lazy bum.

It doesn't take much to make me feel like a bum or a potato these days with postpartum depression being slapped on top of the current depression issues I already have.

My goal for this year is to get the house fixed and improve on some other aspects of the place since it's not exactly the nicest place in the world. My grandmother things the place is a hovel for some weird reason. Then again the woman also acts like my family is completely destitute when that is the furthest from the truth. I know I'm currently a stay at home mom and only my boyfriend is working, but damn. We are doing just fine for people living in a front room, thank you very much.