Slowly Getting Back to Normal, Post-Ike

(Above: Grilling and chilling at the townhouse community)

Slightly more than half of Houstonians have power now. We’ve had it for several days. More stores and restaurants are open. Life is slowly getting back to normal.

It’s been a pretty wild week, to say the least. Mostly, it’s been full of a lot of good Houstonians helping each other out and making the best of a natural disaster. Take the photo above. We live in a townhouse community that doesn’t much lend itself to “community.” Everyone has always been friendly enough, but we tend to pull into our garages, close ’em, and go about our business, isolated. With the power off after Ike, we all wandered out and got to know each other. We loaned each other stuff. We helped each other out. One neighbor had a power inverter on his cars, and let people charge phones and such. We emptied thawing freezers and fed each other. I grabbed the photo above during one of our grilling nights — after our feast, we stayed up carrying on way too late. It was fun. I now have a much better idea of who my neighbors are, and they are some good people.

Of course, there have been instances of bad apples. Like the lady in the townhouse community who screamed at us after that first night. Because she wanted to pull her SUV down the drive, and apparently was miffed we were blocking one of two approaches to her garage (the group was not directly in front of her place, but in front of OUR places, only blocking our own garage access). So she yelled and screamed at multiple neighbors the next day, including Callie (who was trying to make peace, as usual). And she pulled the screaming same act the day after that. And was STILL screaming about it the day after that. Then she apparently headed off to Indiana (as reported by some other neighbors). A few hours after she left, power came back on. There seems to be some justice in that. 🙂

Anyway, I still don’t really understand her anger — or how her resentment just festered, day after day after day (even after multiple invites to come join us — which got the response of her threatening to run us over in her SUV “next time”). Maybe something else is going on in her life. Maybe this hurricane just put some people over the edge. Or maybe she just doesn’t have very good coping mechanisms and self awareness and lets perceived slights build and build and build until the hatred and anger just come spilling out. Whatever. Someone should get her a copy of this book, although even that doesn’t seem to do the trick for all people so consumed with anger.

But, none of us really let it bother us too much after the initial shock. Life is too short to worry over people who would rather scream and yell at you than come share the food you’ve cooked for the community, and it’s much healthier to focus on the good things than the bad. That’s true of life in general.

Anyhoo… blogging here and at bH may slow down considerably for a while. Or it may not. I’m not really sure, but the last few days have had me wondering if there aren’t much better uses of my time. In the short term for me, there certainly is, as I’m off to Oklahoma for some family stuff tomorrow, and am planning on an October filled more with active pursuits (backpacking, maybe some travel, gym time to make up for missed time this month) and less with the blogging wankerfest.

And I’m planning on a big townhouse grill party for Houston’s National Night Out (on Oct. 7). It will be good to hang with some of our new friends, under much improved circumstances. I hope Angry Aggrieved Woman has calmed down some by then, and doesn’t try to run anyone over. 🙂

MORE: Incredible photos here.