After a day and a half of fevered hurricane coverage, I finally heard back from my dad who evacuated to Missouri City (near Sugar Land) with Sandy, and the news isn’t so good. We suffered some roof damage in the game room (my dad gave me some figures like 4’ x 12’, and such) and my mom’s bathroom (both upstairs). In the latter, the room was a disaster area because sheetrock from the ceiling and insulation absolutely littered the floor. The lawn is, apparently, a sea of shingles. But, on the bright side, we suffered water damage only from the leaking roof, which means the carpet in the gameroom got a bit wet, and so did my dad’s room underneath it, but I don’t think that’s too serious. Every other room is perfectly intact. My dad told me that Sandy’s room is like a fortress, which I’m sure she was proud to hear (we converted our open patio to a room where Sandy could sit outside without getting wet or getting too hot — other than the fact that Sandy gets the tiles muddy on a daily basis, it’s not a bad little place).

I’m not sure how this news has hit me. I was absolutely convinced that our house would make it out of the hurricane intact because the majority of damage was around the coastal areas and downtown Houston. I assumed we would therefore be safe from the storm surge, which was correct, but I didn’t count on the hurricane-force winds bearing down on our house. The house is the tallest on our street, and sticks out a little bit before the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. And in this crude Tower of Babel sort of way, my house was probably one of the few houses in our neighborhood to suffer damage at all, let alone damage of this sort. My dad told me that the house might be unlivable for a little while, simply because the upstairs is such a mess, which means that I’ll be stuck in Austin for quite a while longer. I had previously hoped that, if the hurricane left everything alone, I could come back next weekend — I had even been planning to come back this weekend, but that didn’t work at all. At the very least, I’ll be back in two weeks, but what to? The charity of someone else’s house? Our old house in Webster? But not mine, because of an unfortunate accident?

I think one of the worst parts about this is that I’m terribly homesick and I don’t have a home to home to, not for some time. I could blame building standards and so many other things, but ultimately I can’t say anything because you can’t prevent or avoid a hurricane, let alone one the size of Ike. For now, I’m just happy that my dad and my dog are alright and back home trying to clean up the mess. Maybe I’ll see them before long. I’ve been hoping oh so many hours of the day that I will.