I like the lake patio chairs much more than I like the patio patio chairs. I like them more than our couch
also. They're padded and they rock. They're also woven and so feel cooler than the over stuffed (and hot) couch.
Without air conditioning, it's important to stay as cool as possible in a hurricane.
I stayed relatively cool. I "kept my cool" too. Wine helped. As I watched
trees topple and debris fly, I'd think "Wow! Look at that!" in an other worldly way and take a sip.
I will not write that the gusts "blew me away." They
did not. They did however, thrill me. Rock, rock, rock. Sip, sip, sip.
Rains pummeled. Not alone. Rains cannot pummel by themselves. They must be propelled
to pummel and so winds came too. Lots of both. Lots and lots of both.
My husband brought our old friend the radio in from the garage. He apologized to it for its dusty
condition. It forgave us our twenty years of inattentive and cell phone addicted behavior and started right up.
Craig
the Weatherman spoke to me from our battery operated buddy. I'd watched and listened to Craig the Weatherman during the halcyon
days of full power Category Five TV watching preparations. "After we lose power, you only get to open your refrigerator
one time," Craig the Weatherman would earnestly instruct as he assured our post hurricane survivability. I hung on his
weathered words, even if they were not "storm related."
Craig the Weatherman bantered with Elliot R. and "Beautiful Girl" (I am sorry beautiful
girl whose parents live in Kendall, I do not know your name). He ruefully told of his travails with his shutters. He
confided that he often napped on cots at the station. He'd laugh, shake his head and rasp that he'd only had an hour's
sleep in the last seventy two.
I'm
not sure how one can really prepare for a Cat 5, except with prayers and wine--or getting the heck out of Dade-Dodge--but
finding Craig on the radio helped. "I gotta get some water," Craig would apologetically rasp. It was almost
as if he added: "OK, Kim? You good to go, Kim? Got enough water and wine? You'll be okay, Kim. You
and your family will be okay. I'm with you, girl. We will see this through together. You and me, and millions
of other water and wine drinking people, gente, gens.
"I just need a glass of water."
It's got to be tough being a weatherman during a CAT 5 hurricane. Never once, though, did I hear or
see Craig become impatient. He never said, as did a different weatherman on a different channel, "F@#K 'em! F$%K
'em!" That weatherman had decided to "be stern" and demand that a radio station F@#KING SIMULCAST as he'd been
promised and not play F@#King Hip Hop!" I've taken literary liberty here as I did not hear Weatherman From A Different
Channel say exactly that. Seems, though, probable.
In
contrast, Craig modulated his voice. He calmly told us that, in a Cat 5 our roofs might come off. He lovingly directed
us to have our safe places in mind as part of "our plan." He'd share bits of his plan and that would prompt
Elliott R and Beautiful Girl to share pieces of their plans and concerns.
Elliott R seemed the most nervous of the three. Like me, Elliott R's lived in Miami a long
time. Beautiful Girl--she is beautiful and funny and authentic and probably very smart, so don't get your feminist dander
up--is much younger than Elliott R. These preparations (and cot accommodations) may be her first.
Craig the Weatherman is from Oklahoma or Wisconsin and knows tornadoes better
than hurricanes. But he did a bang up hurricane job.
I expect he'll be working with Bryan Norcross at The Weather Channel soon.
