Hurricane Blues

Would it be wrong to say I miss hurricanes?

I think it would. I don't quite mean I miss hurricanes, as much as I mean I miss watching them progress, but hoping there wouldn't be mass destruction. I guess, I could say I miss having more diverse weather, that's more euphemistic and PC. Here in San Diego, the weather is pretty spectacular, but we get very spoiled and complain if it's a little cool when we want to go to the beach. If it's humid and hot and we are just laying around the house and can't catch a breeze because a large portion of the population doesn't have air conditioning. It hasn't rained in forever here. Our landing is kind of falling apart, the plaster is crumbling off the wood supports, and today, when the FP stepped on the bottom step, the concrete on the edge broke off completely. I think everything is so dry it's deteriorating in the heat.

Going back to my childhood, I remember huge rainstorms and having the power go out for hours. It was fun. We would stumble around looking for the emergency candles and votives and light them. We would each get a candle to carry around, even though I was young. I always loved playing with fire, so that was part of my excitement. I remember watching some sitcom when I was little in which they had to eat the ice cream when the power went out. I think power outages meant eating ice cream while holding a candle to me.

The next day, I would walk to the bus stop, and inevitably the street would be a lake. I thought that was neat too. I would walk around the edge and slowly stick my foot farther and farther into the middle to see how deep it was.

I haven't lived too much of my life around snow, but one of my most memorable days in Boston was the April 1st snow storm. The whole city was pretty much shut down. Pretty much. I didn't go into work, because I assumed it was shut down. I got a call from my boss asking where I was. He was cool about it, but he basically went in just to open the door for me so I could count inventory. My friends and I just trudged around downtown and went bar hopping. That was a great day.

When we moved to New Orleans, there was weather galore. Sometimes after a long steady rain the streets would be flooded, and I would be driving down a street wondering if I should turn around or risk driving further down the river. If you have ever driven in water, it's a scary feeling, because you're steering, but you can feel the car float, and you don't want to take your foot off the gas pedal, whatever you do.

Whenever there were hurricane warnings, everyone asked everyone else if they were evacuating. We never did. Too much of a hassle, we didn't have the money, we didn't know if our cars could idle on the interstate that long in all that traffic without conching out, we didn't want to travel with 2 freaked out cats, and we didn't want to miss out.....

There. I said it. One time, we were in Pennsylvania when a storm system was headed to New Orleans. Our flight home was scheduled on the eve of the hurricane. The FP's parents were trying to force us to stay there, but we couldn't get stuck in Pennsylvania and not be able to get back to our cats. So, our flight connected in Atlanta, but of course it was cancelled by the time we got in. So, we rented a car and drove back. That was the most empty drive on an interstate ever. There was some traffic going east. But no one, NO ONE, was headed our way. When we got in town, it was like a ghost town. The storm jogged east, I think, and we sat on the front porch and played guitar. There was not one drop of rain, but some pretty strong wind.

There was a tropical storm one night that was pretty bad. Once again though, we sat on our front porch and watch the rain blow in sideways, and the transformers blow out, one by one. It was like fireworks. It turned out, that our friends who lived across the street from us were also on their porch watching the storm. It was so black out though, that we couldn't even see each other.

I won't go into Katrina. If you know me, which most of you do, you know that we stayed in New Orleans for the storm, and we left the day after.

And here we are in San Diego now. The whole east coast is preparing for this Irene character. I'm going to come out and say it, I kinda feel left out. I know that's wrong. But I'm just being truthful. She seems to be falling apart, Irene, but you have to be prepared, right? She could reform. Anyway, If 77mph winds hit a city like New York, there could be some damage. There are probably some old buildings that aren't hurricane safe up the east coast. Lots of plants and tree branches could blow around like flying weapons. I don't want anyone to think I don't feel for these people and hope no one's hurt and damage is minimal. Waiting for storms is a big interruption and a loss of income even if it doesn't hit. They are a big pain in the ass no matter what happens.

It's been hot and humid today. The HOA in our complex was replacing the hot water heaters today, so there was a notice that the water would be cut off all day today. I had filled the brita pitcher to the brim, and I filled two pitchers for miscellaneous water in the kitchen. In the bathtub, I filled a little garbage can with water for flushing. Of course, they only had the hot water off all day. Most of the day we've had water.

We've had CNN on all afternoon. We took a long nap with the blinds flapping in the light breeze. As the reporters repeated the same information over and over on CNN, I slept hard. I woke up, and it felt like we were in New Orleans again, waiting for an approaching storm.