Now and then people call Isaac "Ike" for short. He took to it last year, and for a few weeks had all his little school chums saying, "See ya Ike! Good bye Ike!" Then it wore off, like the wearing of a coat and tie.
The other day I mentioned to him that there's a hurricane called Ike. This really pleased him. "Hey– that's my name!" he said. "Is it named after me?" I explained that no, it's not named after him, it's just a coincidence. [Adding silently that since his birth he has been quite like a hurricane in many ways.]
Then he asked a question I wasn't expecting: "Am I controlling it?" To which I wanted to reply, "I don't know– ARE YOU???" But I could see that he was genuinely concerned… and seeing as Ike was looking like it was going to cause a lot of destruction I didn't want him to feel responsible… so I reassured him that no, it's just a force of nature and no one is controlling it.
Living in Ohio, I expected Ike to remain in the abstract. We're about 1400 hundred miles from Galveston. And yet, last night Ike slammed us. It was very hot all day, then late in the afternoon the wind really started picking up. We have a new baby bullfrog– at least that's what we think it is– and so we were down by the play structure catching crickets. I noticed at first that the clouds were moving incredibly fast, and a strange direction– from the south. The trees were really whipping around, and after a while it seemed best to go inside before we got hit by flying debris.
Ben maintained his project of grilling a flank steak undaunted, pausing only to secure loose items and close up the garage. It was sort of fun to watch– we have a lot of tall trees and they were bending and contorting in ways I've never seen before. It seemed very likely that we'd lose some of them– the ground is sodden, too. When I came inside to check the weather, I learned that we had a high wind warning– gusts up to 65 mph. That little fan symbol that marks hurricanes on the weather map was right on us.
Around 10:00 last night, we got a call from school– cancelled today due to lack of power. Hm… maybe Isaac IS controlling it! I mean, how likely is it that it would take a path directly through Northeast Ohio? I guess over 300,000 people in the area are in the dark. But we have lights and are fine. Of course, just because there's no school doesn't mean we get to sleep in. Elias got up well in time for dawn, per usual!
Today is the day the drilling is supposed to start on the well. The big rig has been sitting here since Friday. Since I'm desperate for clean potable water I look forward to a day of banging and roaring and clanging machinery (if they come– I hope they haven't been messed up by the storm, too). But on the upside, the boys will not miss a minute of it!