Is Everyone Taking Heed??

Tempest Chronicles Day 18

Here I am reporting to you LIVE from the east side or as it’s known in places subject to tropical weather the bad side of Arthur. I bet the distinction was some sort of weather person’s thinking back before people were so plugged in.

I mean, calling something the good side placates and calms the masses, preventing a run on brown liquor.

As storms go, this one is rather friendly, there was enough lightening to keep Ed disturbed and agitated most of the night, but I did have a breakthrough and realize that maybe shutting the bedroom door would keep him from seeing it and being as troubled. (It wasn’t really my idea, but history is written by the first to arrive and no one in the home is up yet, so…..)

Right now, it’s raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock. This is something my mama used to always say, and it was about the closest thing to vulgar that came out of her mouth, with the exception of the time she made a special effort to contact my sister the nurse, and ask her what makes a man impotent. The flashes of blue every couple of minutes keeps making me wonder how long the electricity will hold out.

I did however receive a sign from God in the fact that as I was just completing my Wordle for the day, my phone went off saying that there was a tornado warning and to seek shelter in an interior room. I took my victory as a theological wink that everything is gonna work out. Interior room be damned.

This of course took me back to the time when I was 8 years old and we were evacuating to escape hurricane Camille from Columbia, Mississippi. My father for some reason had gone ahead to our friend’s house in Jackson and my mother the hyperbolic magnolia blossom, was left to round up my sister and I to make the 80 or so mile trip.

Of course there were no nattily dressed weather gays to lead the unsuspecting masses to the other side, all the gays were busy recovering from Stonewall in August of 1969, so we had to rely on the tinny scratchy transistor radio for our storm information.

I can’t say that I remember what the announcers were saying but I do recall how apocalyptic it felt. The monotone of his voice which played over the constant din of what my 8 year old mind thought was information machines spewing out the longitude and latitude of Whirlygig Camille made me think that the bugles would sound any minute and the lord Jesus would be descending from heaven.

I certainly couldn’t ask my mother about this as her eyeballs were already out on stems at the thought of what to do about my pet rabbit Peter. She decided to ask the invalid couple across the street who were staying behind in their wheelchairs to be on bunny patrol. I busied myself with packing my Captain Action doll for travel.

Contrast that scene with the airbrushed beauties of today standing in front of a lucite desk, laptop fired up and sleeves immaculately folded up exposing just enough forearm to simulate that work is being done.

Weather gays with the motion satellite constantly gesticulating behind them, jaw dropping colors forming and reforming in amoeba like shapes, while they calmly swoop back and forth with their “map arm” that has been focus grouped out to help them decide where to best stand and turn and smile.

It’s like sychronized swimming without water or bathing caps.

Keep in mind, this is just for a piddling little tropical storm with maximum winds of 45 MPH. I shudder to think if there’s something with an eye headed our way. Maybe I should go ahead and pre fill out my FEMA claim just to be safe.

Addendum: The rain has moved out but the park won’t be open until 10 today so Ed and I decided to walk the neighborhood. The only sad thing to report is a now departed from this earth, heron carcass under the live oak that they inhabit. Ed thinks it was fowl play…………….Clearly we need a nap.

Vitals: 82 degrees with a flash flood warning until 9:15 AM combined with a 89% humidity and 12 MPH wind makes it feel like the doctor just prescribed for you to eat your weight in butter and sugar to save yourself from a rare congenital disorder that you just discovered you have..

17 days down

166 to go