Hurricane Irma can shove herself out of this state.

Another song came to mind this time around, you probably know it:

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Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride
Nobody gonna slow me down, oh no
I got to keep on movin'

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[I am not sure why that came to mind but when I woke up this morning that is how I thought, and that is the song running through my head].
Song is by Matthew Wilder - Break my stride

I don't know how it happened, all I know is that my particular area came out pretty darn unscathed. Was it freaky? Yes At something like 11:30 pm or so, the winds just kept getting stronger. Midnight rolled around and we were hunkered down in our laundry room on a mattress no knowing what to expect as it continued to be inland (it shifted throughout the day, which no one apparently saw it coming). But once 1:30am rolled around, it got more quiet. I waited, and waited, and waited. I checked radars and news updates and it looked it for all intensive purposes it has passed my area. And guess what? We still had power.

I had been waiting all night to lose power. Everyone on our home owners facebook page, and all over the place kept mentioning how people close by had lost power. But we never did. Around 2:30am I decided to move my daughter onto her bed (temporarily her bed mattress on the ground beside my side of the bed) and we laid on the bed ourselves. This option is much more comfortable then all three of us shoved on a not so thick mattress (Queen - if even) in the laundry room, that apparently does not get much of the air conditioning, with a dog which I now know snores, and snores loudly.

Don't believe me? Here is a video with the clip of him snoring. The picture will be black so you won't see anything since it was dark in the room, but you will hear him.

This is a picture of my dog (Yes the snoring culprit)

I was so exhausted from the last week of the media pushing how prepared we had to be and how bad this storm was going to be. So exhausted from watching it move from the East of the State to the West. So exhausted from the pressure changes in the weather around me. So exhausted from the worry about if I was doing enough, making sure I was prepared and all that. So exhausted even physically from the lack of sleep, the constantly moving things in the house from patio furniture, to boarding up our doors with heavy wood, to you name it. Once I hit the bed last night with a bit of a relieved smile on my face, I knocked out. I woke up still tired and in a very kind of down mental state, but we were fine. We woke up to air conditioning, and fans on, lights on, and our refrigerator on, and hot water, and fine water.

The Night, watching while Irma approaches

I took a few videos throughout the course of the night to show the wind, the rain, and some of the sounds (roar) of the incoming hurricane. Once it started to get really dark and extremely windy I did not return outside to video anything. Here is what I did capture though.

This is earlier in the evening when the wind was starting to pick up.

Wind has picked up even more and I didn't want to go outside. If you listen carefully you can hear the Television playing an episode of Friends.

This is my last video of the night. The wind got stronger and the rain was flying everywhere. If you listen carefully you can hear almost a constant roar like a train or truck in the background. That's the sound of a hurricane approaching.

The Aftermath

Like I said, because we were lucky where we were we didn't get anything too bad. So today, the day after here are some pics and such from my neighborhood showing the damage, as you can tell it is not really considered damage (besides some trees and fences).

This is a street near me where it shows the damage. This is pretty much just moss which has fallen from the beautiful Oaks trees around us. It littered the street and sidewalks. Broken branches and possible a couple of broken trees, but not much else.

A Beautiful Oak tree that lost all it's most and some branches in a nearby plaza

A couple of broken trees and a knocked down fence

A type of palm tree that lost all the top leaves and such.

With nearly 3 million people that lost power, and an estimated 52% of electricity customers just in my county alone, we were very lucky as a community to keep our power all throughout the night. There was one scare where we lost power for about 5 seconds, that's it. Although it was scary, it was interesting to go through. I wish I had more exciting pictures and stories for those of you who watched from far away and would love to see more interesting stuff, but also thankfully - I don't. I am thankful that my house is intact with no damage (even a good bit of my neighbors had something, but I didn't. I am thankful that my family was not harmed in any way. I am so thankful that we had power all through the night. All I can think of is that all the thoughts and love that were sent my way, especially from those on Steemit, really helped. If it did or if it didn't, depending on your beliefs, I still want to say from the bottom of my heart that I am thankful for this wonderful community.

Thank you for being awesome. Thank you for wishing me well. Thank you for upvoting my posts and when seeing me on discord and such asking how I was doing. I am back, with only a day in between, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

Stay awesome Steemit!