By Erin

By now you have all seen the destruction from last week’s storm on TV, and likely many more of you have seen it firsthand.  If you’ve just seen it on TV, I can assure you: the damage was much, much more widespread than you’ve seen, and its affected many, many more lives than they can show on a newscast.  Lia and I are among some of the luckiest: she never lost power, and my apartment was one of the very, very few first floor apartments in Jersey City that wasn’t decimated by the storm surges and residual flooding.  We are lucky enough to be at the top of very small hill, and our apartment is in the back of the building. So as the water turned streets into rivers, it never made it to our block – even though we’re only 2 blocks from the water, and blocks much further inland were ravaged.  And our neighborhood wasn’t ANYWHERE near as bad as what Lia saw on her trip to the Rockaways to volunteer, or what friends on Staten Island and the Jersey Shore have experienced.

People still don’t have power, heat or hot water, and the temperatures are creeping lower and lower.  We are, very, very thankful and fortunate.

We have done what we can to give back, and are continuing to do so.  I also know that many of you are looking for ways to give back.  There are plenty of ways to donate, such as the Red Cross: redcross.org/hurricane-sandy and the NJ Community Food Bank: https://community.njfoodbank.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=506.  If you know of other good, reputable organizations looking for donations, please, please leave the link in the comments.

If you’re in NYC and looking to donate items, Lia and I do know a few people collecting items in NYC that will be sent to families and communities, so let us know, and we can tell you where to bring stuff to.

If you’re to donate directly to someone or a local small business that’s been affected, our friend Kristen, the owner of Kanibal Home, who’ve we’ve written about on this blog many times before, suffered devastating damage to her boutique from flooding.  Her friends set up a Facebook page to help herrebuild her livelihood. Today they posted that Kristen learned that her insurance wouldn’t cover any of the damage from the storm. I popped by today to check in – Kristen was hard at work repairing the store, which was seriously damaged.  If you’d like to help a local store owner get back on her feet, check out the Facebook page, or ChipIn page where you can donate to Kanibal Home’s recovery.

Currently our office is approaching the 100-degree mark. Nothing productive happens when its 100 degrees indoors. So in the meantime, enjoy this picture of ice cream that our company bought us to try and keep cool. It helped for 15 minutes. Then we went back to trying not to pass out.