Category Archives: Hurricane Sandy

The Misconception About Philanthropy

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  Today’s mixer is BYOB! That would be, “Bring your own bacon.”Today’s guest of honor, Jennifer Barbour, is a bacon lover, pie hater, mom to two boys and three dogs, and all around do-gooder.   If you haven’t checked out Jennifer’s blog at anotherjennifer.com, it’s definitely worth the read.  Jennifer writes about motherhood, living in Maine, blogging, social media, and she also lends her voice to an abundance of worthy causes, through her Philanthropy Friday series.   I am so happy to have Jennifer here on my page today.  Please give her a warm welcome! photo credit  When I worked for a nonprofit, I was the person … Continue reading →

A Favor

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It was a beautiful Saturday. My children jumped on the trampoline in our backyard and swung on the swings of the ancient play set and rode their bicycles through the grass.  Their voices carried into the yards of neighbors as they played catch and chased the dog. A mile from here, many of the yards, yards where children played last summer and early last fall, are still empty, as my neighboring town of Union Beach, New Jersey was one of the hardest hit towns in the state by Hurricane Sandy.  Blocks of homes were wiped out, if not flooded to … Continue reading →

Baking A Difference

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I’m a Jersey girl.  A Jersey Shore girl to be exact.  I grew up in the city of Long Branch and now live in a small town on the bay shore, not far from Sandy Hook.  While the storm didn’t destroy my house or my car or my first floor in its wrath, I have taken the damage it caused personally.  New Jersey is my home. It is the home of my family and my friends and my friends’ families and their friends. I know people who lost everything.  Not statistics.  Actual people. I know people who had to run … Continue reading →

And Then We Ate

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We ate, and we ate a lot. We ate peanut butter out of jars. We pizza at a friend’s house who invited us over in the evenings to stay warm in their house, powered by a generator.  We ate garlic bread and pasta at a neighborhood potluck, which took our minds off of the cold and the darkness and the devastation for a few short hours.  I ate egg and cheese sandwiches handed out by volunteers from the Union Beach Fire Department while I walked the storm ravaged streets, helping people drag their waterlogged belongings to the curb.  We ate … Continue reading →

Please People! Leave Your Negligees at Home!

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I’m sure you wear lovely undergarments. But, like the rest of us, you may need to refurbish yours from time to time.  Or, maybe you just get bored.  That leopard print bra that you were in love with last season may feel dated to you now.  Or, like me, maybe your boobs changed in size after kids and breast feeding, and it just doesn’t fit right anymore. Perhaps you have thrown it in a plastic bag along with some other items for donation.  There is nothing wrong with it, right? It’s not worn or stained, therefore, maybe some nameless, faceless … Continue reading →

Keeping the Mess in Perspective (Guest Post at the Mommy Mess)

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I’m the first one to preach to all of you that life is messy and that we need to be OK with the mess.  We need to learn to thrive despite our messes.   However, I have a confession to make. I don’t like messes. I ask my guests to take off their shoes before coming into my house because shoes track dirt.  And dirt is messy!   I vacuum my carpets daily and sweep my kitchen floors after meals. I could naively tell you that I thrive on order. Yet, of course, “thriving on order” is a polite way of … Continue reading →

About A Hurricane

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I could tell you that we lived without power for seven days. I could tell you that when we lost use of our furnace due to the power outage, it got cold in my house.  Very cold.  I could tell you that we wore the same clothes over and over again until they smelled because we had didn’t have a working washing machine or dryer. I could tell you that I ran a tiny car-powered generator for the first seventy two hours, in an attempt to save our refrigerated food.  But that due to the gas shortage on the Jersey … Continue reading →