Carpools and Ike

Each member of our family looked at the coming of Hurricane Ike in differing ways.

Dave was the responsible patriarch of the house and worried about things like where the safest place in the house was, arranging a bed for Davey in my closet so he'd be close-by and away from windows, finding plywood to board up windows, etc.

I, the pregnant one, was emotional about it. As I drove around the town that I had only been in for 2 weeks gathering extra food and water, I became teary-eyed thinking about the loss of property and perhaps life that loomed in Houston's future. At that point, the eye of the storm was projected as being headed straight for us in Katy.

Davey, however, was blissfully ignorant of all the worry going on around him. He really enjoyed the gathering of neighbors and kids outside as we all waited for and speculated about the storm. He loved feeling the 30-40 mph winds blowing his hair around, though eventually the sand and other gunk in the air and our eyes drove us all inside. 

On a seemingly unrelated note, Dave takes a vanpool to work very early in the morning to beat the traffic. So every time Davey heard the word "carpool" as we discussed how Dave was adjusting to the early-bird schedule, Davey found the concept quite intriguing. We sometimes explained that no, we weren't talking about a car in a pool, but mostly just enjoyed him smiling about the idea.

The day after the hurricane, since we were lucky enough to still have electricity, we were sitting around watching footage of the damage when a picture similar to the one above was shown as people became stranded trying to navigate around downtown Houston. That's when we heard a very excited and emphatic "CARPOOL!!" from Davey. At last he was vindicated.