Weather Watching and Laundry

I feel scattered again this morning.  I got up at midnight and spent an hour reading about hurricane Idalia, at the same time wondering why I was doing this.  In part, it's because I was having trouble sleeping.  In part, it's an abiding curiosity about weather that I share with many family members.  Is it because we come from farm folk?  Is it because my family members grew up with older family members modeling this behavior?

It looks like we have another hurricane that will come ashore in Florida and continue moving over land--and it will be hurricane strength when it gets to Georgia.  It's a category 4 storm at least.  I spent some time in the middle of the night trying to determine how many strong storms have come ashore during my lifetime.  We have definitely had more category 4 and 5 storms strike the mainland U.S. in the last 15 years than we had in the 15 years before that.

It will be interesting to see how much damage takes place in major population centers that are further from the coast, Tallahassee and Gainesville.  It will be interesting to see how other port cities on the east coast fare:  Jacksonville, Savannah, and Charleston.

This morning, I need to face something much more mundane:  the laundry.  It's not as simple as it might seem.  We've been without a laundry room since late June, so every 10 days or so, I wash a load at the laundromat and bring it home to dry.  Today, however, is a day to wash sheets, so I'll also use their dryer.  It's a pleasant enough laundromat and close, and the hi-efficiency washer is a marvel.  Still, I'll be glad to have a laundry room here at the house again--and to get the washer and dryer out of the middle of the kitchen floor, where they've been since late July.  We did get a good deal when we bought them on sale in late June to have them delivered several weeks later.  But I might not have felt the same sense of urgency, had I known that the laundry room construction would be delayed.

But after the laundry, I have quilt group, and we're having a salad potluck lunch before getting down to making quilts for Lutheran World Relief.  And tonight I have my second seminary class that meets for the first time.  I'll read for tomorrow's class as I monitor the laundry.