Below she shares her story, and not only that. Leonora is even raising money through the sales of these prints to help with hurricane relief efforts.
We are so happy Leonora is safe and that she's giving back through Handmade with purpose!
Leonora's story 10/29/2012
The lights keep flickering as I am watching my homegirl Teresa on Long Island Medium. I sit there on the couch waiting for the inevitable. The house rattles and I am convinced the air conditioning unit in my living room is going to be pelted at my forehead going 90mph.
7:30pm pitch black.
Hurricane Sandy hit and the power was officially gone. I was convinced that maybe I would be without power for 1 day, maybe 2 days tops. On Long Island we rarely get "hurricanes", they usually start out as a hurricane down south but by the time they reach us up here they are down graded to a tropical storm.
Bub was out playing "Captain America" on the fire truck. So I figured I should call him to let him know we lost power and that I was ok.
Except the cell towers were also taken out, so my cell phone was pointless at this point and was now my flashlight.
With nothing else to do I sit at my kitchen window and look outside. I see what I thought was lightning, the sky lit up about 3 times over the course of 20 minutes. I later realized those were transformers on the power lines going up in a blaze of glory.
About 2 hours later a fire truck pulls up to the house.
Bub runs off the truck, comes up stairs and tells me "Babe, it's bad out there"
There is one thing you should know bout bub, he is a "tell it like it is" guy, so for him to say it was bad I knew it was bad.
He had to leave me again to go on more fire calls which consisted of gas leaks, fires, trees down, power lines down, pretty much anything you can think of.
The next morning we drive around the neighborhood, this is what we see all around us.
Trees uprooted and in the power lines
Trees taking out cars
This was a side walk.
a tree down in my parent's back yard, there is bub in the bottom left hand corner cutting it down
Tree taking up the entire block and into more power lines.
So, what I thought would turn into 2 days TOPS with no power turned into 7.
DO YOU HEAR ME? SEVEN.
The first few days were manageable, I laughed in the face of Sandy saying "YOU'LL NEVER BREAK ME!"
But by day 6 she broke me, she broke me hard.
Yes, we had a generator, but the problem was we couldn't run it 24/7. We would run it for a few hours just to keep the fridge cold. We also have an electric stove so cooking food was pretty much non existent. By day #4 we finally found a way to hook it up to the heat because in New York temperatures were rapidly dropping from the 50's, to the 40s and now 30's.
I was worried for this little guy the entire time
you see apparently birds can't be in a climate thats below 50*, so I had get super creative to keep him warm.
I tried filling up chinese food containers with hot water, placing them in a cooler, then putting his cage on top of that so the heat could radiate in.
I tried packing socks full of those hand warmers that skiers use to put in their gloves to keep warm and tie it in the cage where he usually hangs out, but apparently a pink argyle sock hanging in a bird cage looks threatening and birdie bugged the eff out.
It's ok birdie, I'm bugging out too, we are in the same boat buddy.
Things were starting to get really bad starting day 3. Since 90% of long island was with out power that meant that 90% of the gas stations were also out of power.
No power = no pumping of gas
No pumping of gas = no one filling up their generators
Not being able to fill up your generator = people stealing generators from people's backyards in a desperate attempt to get power to their house
People waited hours...HOURS in the hopes that the gas station they were currently waiting in line on had gas to spare. No one can fill up their cars or gas cans to keep their generators running.
People were getting cranky and getting cranky fast. A woman ran over a gas station attendant when she found out there was no more gas for her car, a man stabbed another man at the gas station battling it out for gas, they had to call in the Air National Guard and the Police to "babysit" the gas stations and generators so people could "play nice".
Driving was also fun. Most traffic lights are out at every intersection so it was an awesome game of "HOLY SH*T I MIGHT DIE RIGHT NOW BUT IM GONNA BOOK IT HARD AND FAST AND PRAY I DON'T GET T-BONED"
The grocery stores are bare, they have zero perishables on hand.
In all my 28 years I never ever would have guessed I would experience ANYTHING like this.
Most of my family is STILL with out power, they are saying they might be with out power for an additional 7-10 days ON TOP OF already not having power for 1 week.
Things are scary right now, at first I was all like "this is no big deal, just a little storm" but the more time that goes by I am seeing the devastation. It's a hard pill to swallow knowing that the red cross and other organizations are sending aid to a place where I live and call home.
I want to help too, once I get my feet back on the ground I will be selling new items in the shop where the proceeds will go to the Sandy Relief Efforts.
Please, keep us in your thoughts. I just want life to be normal again. I am one of the really lucky ones, things could have been a lot worse.
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