I would like to interrupt my regularly-scheduled Halloween shenanigans to acknowledge how far we’ve come in the 7 years since Superstorm Sandy. The video below was shot on November 5, one week after the hurricane, when we were all battling cold, mold, vermin, and desperation. We had to wait another week for Sanitation to get to us. The sopping-wet contents of everyone’s houses – including all of our food – was in the street for 2 weeks. By the time they got to us, well, you can imagine what it was like. Those poor sanitation workers.

In the video, our house is at about minute 1:27 (the one with the Amazon River Mermaids sign on the deck). (I mean, obviously.)

During the first week after the storm, we all split our time between pulling down walls, piling up garbage, figuring out where we were going to live, walking around like zombies, and standing outside desperately watching for the garbage trucks. When you finished tearing out what you could from your own house, you went down the block to a neighbor’s house and helped out there. As hard as it all was, both physically and emotionally, I’ve never felt more a part of a community than I did in those early days.

Whenever I think about that time, I imagine how much worse it must be for people who don’t have luxuries like insurance and income and hope and help. We were very, very lucky, and we agree that our house is much stronger post- hurricane than it ever was before the storm. I’ve said it before, and I’ll never stop saying it. My main takeaway from this experience has been gratitude for how lucky we were and are.

Though they were a bit slow to get to us, we were still very grateful for the help that the Red Cross brought. I now make an annual donation to the organization to help out victims of other disasters. If you’d like to know more about the organization’s relief efforts, check out the American Red Cross website.

And finally, I published the real-time updates and photos that we were able to post to Facebook during all the craziness (and you don’t need Facebook to see them). Click the link below!

Hurricane Sandy Opens a Can of Whoop-Ass on Broad Channel and Rockaway: A Tale Told Via FaceBook