Year of the Hurricanes
This has been the Year of the Hurricanes, both literal and figurative. At the beginning of this year, we were hosting a mother and daughter who were relocating from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and just recently we had a near miss of our own with Hurricane Florence.
The mother-daughter duo stayed with us for about two months, and we did our best to get them set up with a new life here. Their story and ours actually made the local news:
As for Florence, we were lucky enough to avoid too much damage, though we did lose one tree in our yard, and there was some flooding in our neighborhood and around town.
But having avoided the worst of it, two of my boys and I volunteered with Operation Airdrop, an all-volunteer grass-roots effort to deliver needed supplies to our local airport, where volunteer pilots load them into small planes and fly them directly to the worst-hit areas. Many of the coastal towns and cities were cut off by record floodwaters, creating a very difficult situation. Here's what was accomplished in under a week, with nothing but volunteers:
280,962 lbs of supplies
And then there have been the metaphorical hurricanes. We got some pretty expensive foundation repairs done (literally on my birthday) plus a number of other fairly large expenses, both planned and unplanned. My time, energy, and money are all in short supply at the moment.
That's not to say I will be skipping this year. In fact, as you can see, it's become a kind of a year-round habit at this point. Not every single day, day after day, but whenever the opportunity arises.
I've got a post planned for tomorrow, but after that I will skip the daily posts this year. I might occasionally post here about some activities. Then again I may not. It depends on how many more hurricanes come our way.
In the meantime, here are some of the charities I'm supporting this year:
The ARC of North Carolina
Autism Society of North Carolina
Chapel Hill-Carrboro Public Schools
Durham Public Schools
Disability Rights NC
Eyes Ears Nose and Paws
First In Families of North Carolina
Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC
Habitat for Humanity, Orange County
National Center for Missing & Exploited
Orange County Rape Crisis Center
Paws4ever
SECU Family House at UNC Hospitals
Southern Poverty Law Center
Victory Junction
The mother-daughter duo stayed with us for about two months, and we did our best to get them set up with a new life here. Their story and ours actually made the local news:
As for Florence, we were lucky enough to avoid too much damage, though we did lose one tree in our yard, and there was some flooding in our neighborhood and around town.
But having avoided the worst of it, two of my boys and I volunteered with Operation Airdrop, an all-volunteer grass-roots effort to deliver needed supplies to our local airport, where volunteer pilots load them into small planes and fly them directly to the worst-hit areas. Many of the coastal towns and cities were cut off by record floodwaters, creating a very difficult situation. Here's what was accomplished in under a week, with nothing but volunteers:
6 days
516 flights
3009 volunteers
And then there have been the metaphorical hurricanes. We got some pretty expensive foundation repairs done (literally on my birthday) plus a number of other fairly large expenses, both planned and unplanned. My time, energy, and money are all in short supply at the moment.
That's not to say I will be skipping this year. In fact, as you can see, it's become a kind of a year-round habit at this point. Not every single day, day after day, but whenever the opportunity arises.
I've got a post planned for tomorrow, but after that I will skip the daily posts this year. I might occasionally post here about some activities. Then again I may not. It depends on how many more hurricanes come our way.
In the meantime, here are some of the charities I'm supporting this year:
The ARC of North Carolina
Autism Society of North Carolina
Chapel Hill-Carrboro Public Schools
Durham Public Schools
Disability Rights NC
Eyes Ears Nose and Paws
First In Families of North Carolina
Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC
Habitat for Humanity, Orange County
National Center for Missing & Exploited
Orange County Rape Crisis Center
Paws4ever
SECU Family House at UNC Hospitals
Southern Poverty Law Center
Victory Junction
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