Hurricane Watching

Here I am, wide awake, waiting for the 5 a.m. update from the National Hurricane Center.  Yes, I might have been awake anyway; I often am.  I'm also waiting for Home Depot to open so that I can get some sand for the sandbags. 

Once I haul sand across town, I fully expect the storm to avoid us.  But the last year has shown us how flood prone our new neighborhood is, especially in the back where the alley meets our cottage.

I will haul sand in the same week that we got a refund check from our flood insurance company.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm happy to get a refund, as our flood insurance costs thousands.  Yes, just for flood.  Our windstorm insurance is a separate bill, as is the regular homeowner's insurance that covers everything else.

I fully expect to lose the house in an uncovered catastrophe--actually, I don't really expect it, but some part of me wouldn't be surprised.  I have a vision of nuclear contamination from a terrorist attack that wouldn't be covered even though the insurance company will have collected gobs of money from us through the years.

But back to the apocalypse at hand.  Oops, there I go, overdramatizing again.  And I am not alone.  At work yesterday, productivity plummeted as we kept a wary eye on Tropical Storm Erika.  It's not like we waited for the update at 11 a.m. and then went back to work.  We analyzed the cone of probability.  We looked at possible rain amounts.  We tried to remember which side of the storm is the more destructive side.

The 11 p.m. update last night takes the storm offshore; the 11 a.m. update brought it onshore basically right over my house.  I expect more changes before we're through because it's a mess of a storm.

I have the beginnings of a poem.  Let me record some possible lines:

I have prepared for storms that never came.

I have shopped for hurricane parties that I will never host.

Should I keep it to hurricane images?  I have this line too:

I have sewed quilts for babies that I will never carry to term. 

Let me continue to ponder as I buy some sand for sandbags that I may never fill.  Hey, another line!

That's the problem with a  storm out at sea--I'm frazzled and my attention has splintered.  But if I'm being honest, this feeling isn't unfamiliar to me--I feel my attention pulled in so many ways in any given hour.  Luckily, I'm still capable of pulling myself into a focused attention as I need to do so in the course of a day.

And then it's back to seeing if the latest update has been posted.