Come on Eileen/Irene seems to have become the anthem of Hurricane Irene that just passed over the East Coast.
I’ve been hearing this song for decades; does anyone really know what it says?
Come on Eileen,
I swear (well he means) At this moment you mean everything,
With you in that dress my thoughts I confess verge on dirty
Ah come on Eileen.
I didn’t even know who sang it until now. There are a ton of parodies out there for the hurricane. They kinda hurt my head.
So back to the hurricane itself… Of course local media, as expected, over-dramatized the hurricane. Ok, we aren’t used to hurricanes up here, so sure, it was better to be safe. Our grocery stores were mobbed, our gas stations ran out of fuel, and the traffic was horrendous – everyone jamming the roads going nowhere. I didn’t understand it. I mean, bread and milk were completely cleared from store shelves, (I wonder if there was any peanut butter or jelly left either). What are you going to do with all that now? Your milk will go sour and your bread moldy before you can eat it all. And really, if you lost power, how were you going to keep that milk fresh anyway?
Then there’s the gas. Huh? Why gas? Where ya gonna go when a state of emergency was called and you were urged to stay in your home? One person on Facebook made me laugh with her daughter’s reasoning for this:
MJ: So apparently my VERY SMART daughter thinks the reason everyone is filling their tanks is so the cars won’t blow away!
At one point Governor Christie said, “stay the hell off the beaches” and someone even told us that if you were in the evacuated areas and stayed, the emergency crews would not come rescue you. Well, at least everyone has a full tank now. If you’ve had massive flooding, that full tank is useless. If you didn’t, well, at least you could get to work today.
So everyone along the east coast prepared for the storm of a lifetime. Even this guy:
Seriously?! What the hell is that gonna do?
And, awww, the poor president had to end his vacation. (Do we see a trend here? “Two years ago, Obama’s first vacation on Martha’s Vineyard as president was delayed by Hurricane Bill.”)
I bunkered down in my house with my baby, husband and brother. I tracked what was expected to be a bitch of a storm, (that little green pin is where I’m located).
It looked worse than it was. I was more frightened for my friends near the Maryland, Delaware and Jersey shores and Virginia Beach and North Carolina areas – they were sure to get slammed. Not to mention the loads of tornadoes that were forming and passing through the area.
By Sunday morning, when the hurricane/tropical storm Irene was mostly passed us,
we began to assess the damage. We had a lot of rain and wind during the storm and the damage I found outside was nothing compared to the storm we had last year, (and that was not a hurricane).
Inside though was another story. Because we lost electricity (for 14 hours) our sump pump stopped working, which meant a flooded basement. 
Again.We had 3 shop-vacs picking up water for hours yesterday trying to get the river that was my basement cleared up. It’s now Monday afternoon and the sump pump is still pulling water out of my basement at a steady rate.
We have no idea if our washer and dryer work, (probably not the dryer at least – the last storm knocked it out of commission and we had to pay $300 to get it fixed). For the most part we didn’t lose much. A bunch of clothes got wet (along with baby clothes that Mila has yet to fit into), some cards and items I planned to scrapbook with and my pregnancy journal. That was the real upset. The book is falling a part yet I’m hoping the pages are salvageable. I’m still kicking myself in the butt for even having it down there in the first place.
It could have been much worse and if my only upset is a journal, we got lucky. And really, I count my blessings because it was nothing at all like this.
