Sunday, August 28 . . . "Tropic" of "Cancer"

Ok, here's where the title "Tropic of Cancer" comes from today.

This weekend, NYC was struck by Hurricane Irene, its first hurricane since . . . well, we probably get remnants of hurricanes all the time, but it's been a while since we actually had to prepare for the real thing. We got word on Thursday or so that Hurricane Irene was coming and might be bad -- I bought a jug of water. Friday we were told to prepare for the worst (at the time it was a Category 3) and to prepare to evacuate if you lived in low-lying areas (I bought another jug of water and cans of tuna and soup). Friday afternoon, the city announced they would be shutting down the subway system as of noon on Saturday, and would announce the evacuation plan by Saturday morning -- I made Chris meet me at the store where I bought rice cakes and english muffins (which we needed anyway). We spent all Saturday watching the local news and weather channel, watched other people evacuate (our apartment was not in a danger zone), and hunkered down. It started raining hard in the evening, and started lightning around 10pm. We unplugged everything before we went to bed, just in case it got worse and we had a surge. I woke up around 3:00am to go to the bathroom and saw sheets of water cascading over the roads. But by morning, there was less water than when we went to bed! It was barely raining! We spent the morning watching the news, and while some areas were very flooded and there were lots of trees down, we had NOTHING! That, and by the time it made landfall, it had been downgraded to a Tropical Storm . . . hence "Tropic". So, our first real hurricane was sort of dud, at least in my neighborhood.

10pm

8am -- less water than the night before!

Gipper surveys the damage

and helps with the cleanup.

But when you hear there's a hurricane coming, you have to dress the part.

"I am Tropical Storm Rowan!"

"uhg . . . too much rum punch."

So there's another "Tropic"al part of our day (thanks Myia for all the awesome tropical clothes!)

So, finally, the cancer. No need to fear, that's just me being a hypochondriac. The running joke in our house is to say "remember the time I had Glaucoma?" or "Yeah, it's just a bruise . . . or, you know, shin cancer." And not only did we have two natural disasters this week (oh, did I mention there was also an earthquake on Tuesday?), Chris and I had the plague. Baby had a fever on Wednesday, and apparently the rule is that for however long the baby is sick, mom and/or dad is sick 4x longer. When he had a cold for 2 days, mom had a cold for 8 days. So when baby had a fever for a few hours on Wednesday, that of course means mom and dad have throat infections for 4 days. The cancer part comes in when I panicked that it would get worse today, sunday, when supposedly we would be house-bound trying to escape Noah's flood, and would therefore be without access to antibiotics. I somehow convinced myself that if I did not treat this infection soon enough, it would develop into some incurable super-infection, like how HPV becomes cervical cancer. More likely, I'll be fine by tomorrow and won't even remember that I was sick.