SHE SAID....

Dawn Boyle

Tony, Tony, Tony....seems to me that your wife is a wonderful person who wants to do good in the world. That being said, I would have been pissed off like there were no tomorrow.

Similar to you, I was worried about the house, the kids and my family, even the damn dog, while my husband was worried about the boat. For days prior to the impact of Irene I was bombarded with telephone calls urging me to call our insurance company, contact various boat haulers and there was one phone call where he actually said he might drive the boat out on the Great South Bay and "ride out the storm". Yeah, that's right-my husband thought it was a good idea to wrestle a possible 20' storm surge in a 31' Formula instead of worrying about me and the kids. Crazy huh?

I am not sure if it's that certain types of people don't know how to handle specific crisis or if it's their way of not dealing with the true struggle of calming young children during a hectic time, but my mothering nature kicks into overdrive. I stockpiled for a possible 7 day "venture" while he made sure his boat was secure. I emptied out the crawlspace and collected all our valuables, while he decided it was a perfect time to straighten out the garage. People handle things different. Some people do it the right way, which is MY way and others...well others think it's a good idea to ride out a category 2 hurricane on a boat.

Next natural disaster let me know if you need anything, I am sure I will have it - oh an thank your wife for being so charitable...during a crisis I don't know if I could be that selfless. She is a good egg!

HE SAID....

Tony Walker

 My He Said for this week may be called "He Bitched" instead.

When Hurricane Irene was knocking on Long Island's door my wife went to the phone booth & put on her Superwoman outfit. 

She is a member of The Red Cross so she spent the day before the hurricane at a shelter in New Hyde Park. She then came home for a few hours & by 7PM that Saturday night she was in our town's (Wantagh) shelter.

My wife spent the night there, sat through the hurricane there, & didn't come home until 330pm that Sunday afternoon.

So there I am at home comforting 2 kids, one of them autistic & the other ADHD, making sure the house is secure, checking on the dog, etc.

From all the hype & fear the media spread my daughter was pretty scared. My son wasn't too bad but he was concerned about mommy not being home at such a dangerous time. 

My wife's parents kept calling... my mother kept calling... my wife's best friend kept calling.... "She's not home yet??? She should be home with her family!!! Is she crazy??? When will she be back???" Ah shut up!

The last thing I need is people bitching at me. 

I'm conflicted. More than anything else I am very proud of my wife for volunteering so many hours to help other people. But I admit there is a part of me that thinks she should've been home with her family. Luckily we were not hit that hard. But what if we were? I remember one time our power went off at night from a storm. Our daughter flipped. She needs to be comforted almost constantly. How would I have comforted her & handled a tough situation at the same time? 

I was also mad because we had some plans on Saturday that we ended up not doing because of her not being around. This also upset our daughter quite a bit.

I keep fighting with myself... A part of me wants to say, "Stay home woman!" Another part is saying, "Shut up you chauvinistic dope. Let her go & be proud!" 

Tell us what you think. Do we handle our situations at home before we tend to others or should we all run out to do our part no matter what?

WICKED AFTERMATH...

Dawn Boyle
It has been a few days since we felt the wrath of Irene here in the Northeast. It was a hectic few days leading up to her arrival, a horrible day on Saturday waiting for her to rear her ugly face and then Sunday dealing with the flooding, downed trees and power outages.

I have lived through a few hurricanes in my day, a number of tropical storms and since the 80's dozens of Nor'easter. Over a year ago we had a surprise storm on March 13. We were upstate celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday on the water in Croton On Hudson and braved the traffic to get home. We drove through some of the worst weather I have ever seen in my life. Very similar to what Irene brought to us, only without notice. There were no days and days of prep, it just hit. Amazingly we were back to normal within 24 hours.

I try not to be a complainer, but it seems that we had better "cleanup" after that surprise storm than the bitch that just rattled us this past weekend. Irene was talked about for a week and I am not sure why we (and I mean the local power authority) were not better prepared. I heard that about 400,000 people were without power after the storm. Seems that a number of those are still without. Why is this? I understand that there is a priority of work. I understand that there are only so many people to fix the problem, but with this being a natural disaster where is the out of state help?

We stayed closer to the main road at a friends house who is directly on a river. She luckily didn't have interior damage, we kept lights during the entire storm. It wasn't until 11:00am that a tree fell and took the power out. They responded immediately, took the tree away, but there was no LIPA to fix the power, and still hasn't shown up! My friend's next-door neighbor is on Oxygen. Shouldn't this be a priority?

For the past two nights, I have driven around my neighborhood as a silent vigilante making sure all was secure on the completely dark streets of my neighborhood. Not one truck fixing anything. No sign of promise that my neighbors will be with light anytime soon. It makes me wonder why we still have overhead wires...the amount of money we pay to live here you would think that would actually be something they could do to make life a little easier here as the taxes have us in a choke hold on Long Island.

I hope that everyone gets power soon, know my door is always open to you and fingers crossed for an uneventful weather pattern for the upcoming fall/winter seasons. STAY SAFE!!

COME ON IRENE....IS SHE COMING TO LONG ISLAND??

Dawn Boyle
What is going on? We have an earthquake on Tuesday and now we are told to gear up for getting hit by Hurricane Irene here in New York. I have to tell ya, I kind of feel like the news and media are the "Boy who called wolf".

Haven't we heard this all before? Reminds me of this time last summer, only her name was Danielle. The Weather Channel is the most popular website, channel and app. We wait for updates. We hear words like wind sheer, water surge, extreme threat and extensive damage...my new favorite is storm like we have never seen in our life-time - SERIOUSLY???



I hope they are wrong, and with a few days out who knows what can happen. I guess the best idea is to be prepared and everyone is running around doing just that. In case you don't have the Emergency List, I have it down below so you can run out to Target and the food store. Come to think of it, this storm just might stimulate the economy, you should have seen the line at the food store!

Living in a waterfront community, a handful of houses away from the Great South Bay I am hoping that they are completely wrong. From what I hear the last time our neighborhood was affected, which was Hurricane Gloria in the 80's it was a complete war zone down here. If that happens, look for