Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I survived Fay and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I spent over $200 preparing for every imaginable emergency that could possibly come from a tropical storm/hurricane passing over us, and she turned out to be a gardener with a bad perspiration problem. All the dead stuff was blown from the trees, along with a couple of new branches that I suppose Fay thought needed pruning.

When the rain finally subsided, and the winds calmed down, I decided to go to the grocery store (and you're thinking "like they're going to be open!"). Floridian's are either tough-skinned or crazy, or both. The store was doing better business than ever before. I guess everyone else was also sick of being stuck in their homes for 3 days waiting for the drama of Fay to arrive and leave when she got hung up over the Daytona area set on the spin cycle.

I deliberately didn't purchase much fresh food prior to the storm knowing full well that, if the power went out, we'd be much better off surviving on Chef Boyardee ravioli or Dinty Moore Beef Stew. But after waiting and waiting...with the rain and wind slowly building, we had to actually start EATING that stuff. Blech! God only put these things on Earth to nourish Floridians through times without electric and punish them for living in what was only ever intended to be alligator breeding grounds at the same time.

I guess everyone else felt the same about their stash of Beanie Weenies and that's why the grocery store was filled to capacity.

Our electric never even flickered, but the satellite TV did go out at times. Ooooo! Scary!

Turns out Fay was just a dress rehearsal for her brother Gustav.Where the HECK do they come up with these names??! I think the nerds in the National Hurricane Center are teehee-ing at the office as they brainstorm the name list. I think they try them out on their tongue to see which names evoke the funniest reactions among their peers.

"Hey, how does 'Cootie devastates North Florida' sound to you, guys?"

Laughing to tears, his coworkers all give him 2 thumbs up as they move on to the D names.

Very funny. We are the ones who have to report this stuff to the insurance companies and hire tree removal services, etc. all the while referring to the storm with that ridiculous name you gave it. And YOU guys aren't out of the woods either, you know. Your central office is in Miami! Maybe the storms resent the names and hit Florida so often in repeated attempts to punish you. Ever think of that??!

Anyhow, Fay has left the building and she was just a warm-up act for Gustav. Naturally. Because I only managed to get my biopsies during all this mess...there's still the big day ahead for starting the extension phase and I only have so many pills to last me until then. Why not have another hurricane looming ominously over the whole affair? I wonder if the girl on the box of Miss Clairol is as gray as I am underneath all that. Probably not, but I am living proof that it has superior gray coverage.

I mentioned the biopsies, didn't I? That deserves an entry all it's own so I close this out by saying "Farewell, Fay, and don't come back. Four times is more than enough for any one storm to visit Florida."

1 comment:

  1. I've often thought I should get a year at naming the storms...better yet, the National Weather Service should auction off YEARS that people can buy to name storms! The problem is, there are never 26 major storms in a year, so we never hear of Zulu or Ursela or any of those high end alphabet letters!

    (Of course, my "year" would start out something like, "A" is for arse, "B" is for betch, etc.)

    Linda D. in Seattle

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