Hometown Hurricane in Houston

I'm dizzy from watching Ike spin, counterclockwise, about to inundate the crummy brown-sanded beaches I haunted as a kid. . . and then it will plow fifty miles inland through my pancake-flat hometown. My parents have waited out 50 hurricane seasons in the house where I grew up, and have only briefly lost power and have never had the house flood. We have had to canoe our way around the neighborhood, however--in college my sister and I got stranded in one of Houston's frequent floods, when a city bus sent a wave of water over the HOOD of our car--ironically we were at the intersection of Scott St. and NOAH. In 1961 during Hurricane Carla (I was five), we heard our birdhouse hit the roof while we played Old Maid by candelight . . . in 1983 (11 weeks after our twin boys were born) we spent five days with my parents after Hurricane Alicia knocked our power out an hour farther inland . . . in 2005 after Katrina, my parents agreed to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita but after 8 hours they were still within the city limits and stranded on the interstate--more people died in the evacuation process than in the storm. So needless to say, my parents are not leaving Zone C--their neighborhood's evacuation designator. They've been told that their chances are better staying put than leaving. Thankfully they have plenty of peanut butter and Frito's, masking tape and a hand crank radio, along with concerned neighbors who have already been over to see how they can help them secure their home. But nothing like the surge that is expected to travel from the coast, up the Houston ship channel and right into town has ever occured since the Hurricane of 1908 when 6000 people (without the benefit of 3D Stormtrackers) were killed in Galveston. I'm okay, but I'm telling you . . . between Amanda's apartment being destroyed during the February tornado, her 10 day evacuation from New Orleans during Gustav, and Ike threatening the Everett clan in their 'fraidy holes between Clear Lake and Conroe, it's been difficult to stay centered in the "calm day of the eye." I'm talking it over with Jesus Adonai, the Master over all creation.