A week ago my hubby and I had just gotten our daughter to sleep on our love seat.  With the storm warnings, and being surrounded by lots of large trees (one already had hit our deck in the June storm), we decided to evacuate our top floor.  It was a very odd day.  For my hubby, preparations started on the weekend.  He encountered empty shelves where the water belonged in the grocery store, and spent hours bringing all our outside belongings in.  I was out photographing weddings until 6pm on Sunday, and was thankful to be safely home before the storm.

We spent Monday quietly prepping and enjoying our electronics (computer, and xbox) assuming we would soon be without them for days or more.  I took all my backup hard drives out of my office, in case the roof leaked.  I also took my photos albums (one of my most valued possessions) and put them in the coat closet, in case we needed to evacuate.  Quietly, I packed an overnight bag for all of us as well.  Then we settled down with pillows and blankets away from our windows in our living room for the night and waited.

Now a week later, in Virginia, life is pretty much back to normal.  It’s already almost easy to forget, until I see a post from a friend or family member on Facebook.  I grew up in New Jersey.  I spent my summers vacationing down the shore.   (And yes, it’s still “down the shore” now even though I drive northeast to get there.)  As a teenager, I would spend weekend days on the beach till the sunset, every chance I got.  Over the last few years, I’ve gotten to share the shore with my daughter, and she loves it too.

An old friend just tagged me in a post about Bonjovi’s efforts in the storm recovery, and mentioning the concert we went to together over 20 years ago.  Here I am stressing today about being a little closer to my deadlines than I feel comfortable with, and crunching in every moment to get a wedding blog post up.  Watching the video in her post, and realizing this friend is still without power, and just how devastating this storm is to all my friends and family in New Jersey, just made me pause for a second.  Some times it’s just too easy to get caught up in things that really aren’t as important as we may think at the moment.

Those that read my blog, or know me, know I’ve traveled all over the United States, and lived for ten years in the Pacific Northwest.  I grew up in New Jersey, then moved to New York City,  and later lived upstate New York in New Paltz for many years. I left New Jersey when I was 18, but have visited all the time since, and still always joined my mom for vacations at the shore, almost every summer.  But there is something I guess to home… Maybe it’s having a daughter.  I’ve enjoyed sharing the places I grew up going on the Jersey shore with my hubby, who is from Tennessee, and recently just started to get to see my daughter’s eyes light up when we mention going to the beach.

Seeing the photos of the Seaside Pier in the ocean, the floods, the roads destroyed .. it’s just awful.  I don’t usually ramble on my blog, and don’t post personal often, or really this personal ever.  I just felt like I needed to take a minute and stop thinking about weddings, to think about bigger things.