Having a good time in Well now

Dripping rainwater, I’ve just returned from outside.
I waited too late to start, but I actually prefer working in the cooling rain to the unbearable heat.

There were the huge rolling garbage bins to be secured, on their sides, chained to a fence.

There was the broken gate to be folded flat against the house, a pair of cinder blocks placed to hold the bottom in place and a long steel pipe to brace the upper gate against flapping.

There were tons of house grabby branches from all those trash trees that had to be trimmed back with a (heavy) saw on a (heavy) pole three times my height and just as easy to use as that might seem to indicate.
(Last storm did $350 in shingle damage.
I really need to take out every tree on the lot but that’s, once again, a money issue.)

There were the tenant’s lawn chairs to cable to the chain fence and her glass-topped table to flip onto the grass.
(What? Her help? Seriously, I’m laughing here. I can barely get her to bring in her own recycling bin weekly.)

There were dozens of other tasks to do,
knowing it might all be wasted energy.
Storms are going to do the damage they’re going to do.
But you do what you can and hope.

Nate is picking up.
Tropical Storm Nate became Category 1 Hurricane Nate overnight.
Taking aim at New Orleans and cruising across the heated gulf,
Category 1 Hurricane Nate is gearing up to be Category 2 Hurricane Nate by landfall tonight.

I hate hurricaning.
I hate listening to the wind howl and the rain slamming against the windows
and worrying, worrying, worrying the whole night.
Then when the power goes out (it always goes out)
and things just get worse and more uncomfortable.

I’m going to admit, I get a little scared.
Okay, more than a little scared.

This is not a big storm, nothing close to Harvey or Irma or Maria.
I’ve really got no right to be such a wuss.
Sorry, folks.
I’m a wuss.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yesterday, as we were leaving work,
we were well aware that all the projections had us as the bull’s eye for Nate.
(I don’t think I’ve ever seen ALL the predictions on the spaghetti map so closely aligned.)

There was no panic, Nate was (and still is) not predicted to be that big a storm.
No one was talking evacuations
or anything more dire than possibly having the school maybe closed on Monday.
(Oh darn!)

We said the usual Friday good-byes,
but some of us added a bit of the new hurricane etiquette.
In keeping with the new catch-phrase of our rather inept Comforter-in-Chief,
a number of us waved and chirped - “Have a good time!”

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There were three separate instances in which
we actually saw him utter that phrase
as he was “comforting” hurricane survivors in Texas and Puerto Rico.
“Have a good time!”

Is he so socially unhousebroken that he can only relate to people who have lost everything as though he’s trying to get through a particularly long receiving line at one of his resorts?
How can any hurricane survivor or any simply decent human being not be insulted when a rich man who has never lifted a finger to take care of himself calls disaster victims too lazy to help themselves
or throws paper towels to a “really big” crowd of survivors as though it were Mardi Gras
and they were, indeed, there to have fun
or belittles the scope of a catastrophe by comparing body counts
- Puerto Rico wasn’t a real disaster like Katrina because it has a smaller body count!
He was comparing body counts in an area where the dying hadn’t even finished!!!

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Okay, I never thought I’d say this but
Thank you, Dotard -

• I’m sorry but it just fits so perfectly Donald - Dotard,
  They’re so similar and the one replaces the other so aptly.
• Wait, I lied.
  I’m not sorry.

Thank you for a few minutes respite from fretting about the coming storm.
It’s so much better to be angry than scared.
That’s the lesson you’re teaching us on an daily basis.

Last updated October 09, 2017