Because it really is personal…

1. Make a list of the lists needed to prepare.
2. make sure there’s plenty of liquor.
3.Make sure propane tanks and car gas tanks are full
4. Have all important documents and copies of vintage Barbara Cartland accessible
5. Put everything of sentimental value (photo albums, Willie Nelson LPs, terra cotta cups made in kindergarten) in rubbermaid totes (A Hurricane Survivor’s Best Friend) and seal with duct tape.
6. Ponder the necessity of buying a generator. Decide against it and get more booze instead.
7. Count your windows, make sure you have that many sheets of waferboard, and a box of screws.
8.Deal with the patio furniture. You don’t want an umbrella impaling the neighbor’s truck.
9. Find your way to Walmart, arm yourself with a billyclub, buy gallons of milk and perishables like frozen burritos, and a pint of $6 pomegranate juice to use as a mixer. Don’t forget the club soda.
10. Find your old shortwave radio and put new batteries in it. You don’t want to miss Brazilian Soccer.
Oh there’s plenty of other stuff, like make sure the dogs leashes are handy, and the muzzles, too.
11.ooh. I almost forgot, this is important. Make sure the ipod is charged up.

I was carrying a tray, on the tray was a glass of iced tea, a soup bowl with maybe an inch of tomato soup in it, and a vintage milkglass bowl with some potato chip crumbs. The remnants of my lunch.

Then I trip, hurl the tray forward where the soup bowl shatters into a million pieces and the tomato soup inexplicably traces a 4 foot arc across a recently painted wall.. When I land on my knees, the tray, a black laquer Japanese thing, breaks in half, the tea glass rolls around, spilling tea into the miniscule shards of soup bowl, and the vintage milk glass bowl just slides under the chair, unharmed.

I holler a few unladylike imprecations, question the parentage of the footrest I tripped over, and rest there, on all 4′s waiting for my knees to regain their breath and quit screaming like Janet Leigh.

I am relieved that the vintage milk glass bowl didn’t break. That would have cause marital problems.

And the hip? Nary a peep. Maybe I should get all my joints replaced with titanium models.

This morning’s Hurricane Preparedness Activity involved enlisting the aid of #4 (he’s 9). We rinsed out 2 liter bottles left over from the weekend’s Junque Food Fest. Then we filled them most of the way full and put them in the big freezer. As frozen chunks of ice, they will help keep stuff cold if’n the power goes out. We will continue to do so with milk jugs and whatever else holds significant amounts of water.

Last check (about 5:30 this am) showed Hannah perhaps coming shore Friday, to the north of us, right on top of the Hoi Polloi at Hilton Head. This is good news for us, because south and west is where you want to be . North and east is where the nastiness happens, like tornadoes and feet worth of rain.

But, then there’s Ike just behind, predicted to take a similar East Coast track, and another low pressure system off the coast of East Africa.

They’re just coming along like a column of Abrams tanks, aren’t they.

That’s ok. I’ll take a hurricane over a tornado any day. At least you get warning with them, and there’s always the entertainment of the inevitable housetrailer full of goobers who think hurricane preparedness means getting drunk and standing on the beach.

The bad news is, the Bahamas are really getting hammered.

Sometime today I’m going to sit down and make out some Emergency Menus using up all the meat we have in the freezer (in case the power goes out), and the sort of produce that won’t suffer for being unrefrigerated. That would be cabbage, mainly. Carolina style cole slaw made with vinegar, mustard seed and olive oil. No mayo to spoil and make us sick. I’m thinking hard about the purchase of a couple of bags of charcoal, and I can smoke some meat, maybe make beef jerky. There’s a dead maple tree in the front yard that needs coming down anyway. Maple’s awesome for smoking.

Disasters energize me. I can go into High Efficiency mode and get things done. I like the change of pace.

Speaking of hurricanes and all, I heard a rumor from somewhere that Bro. Scott in Tallahassee got so much rain from TS Fay he had to drain his pool a couple of times. Something like 24 inches or so? Just a rumor, mind you. 24 inches sounds really drastic, but folks in this part of the country- pretty much coastal plain and all of Florida- have soil that is pure sand (well, maybe a couple inches of topsoil), which percs really well, and 24 inches of rain, after flooding the carport and causing a degree of alarm about the pool, just goes *swoosh* into the ground. The good part of it is, that kind of rain drowns the flea eggs and larvae, so it’s a good time to dip the dogs and get the adults.