Waiting on Ike

So there's this hurricane, and the news keep saying things about it like "worst case scenario" and "certain death." They even put those words up in one of the 17 boxes on the screen meant to constantly entertain every nerve center of your brain with information that changes every point-zero-eight seconds.

Trey has been very Trey-like about it. All week he's been saying that the weatherman's dream is that we have a hurricane. Tonight he's been making fun of the reporters standing on the Galveston Seawall talking about, well, "certain death." However, we did move all of our patio furniture so that it's stacked together and hopefully can't be used as a hurricane weapon.

Likewise, Tucker has been very Tucker-like. He's been checking our local tv station's website and clicking on all the links to different formats of weather maps. He's been studying the red, orange, and yellow and what they mean. He's been learning about hurricane names and categories. I think it's been stressing him out a little and he's dealt with it by becoming informed times one hundred. I think he could do the weather on the ten o'clock news.

Keaton has made up stories about the hurricane. He says there are two of them, and he knows them. One is nice and one is mean. Then he saw the hurricane on the way home - it was at church. I guess that was the nice one. He also said that he "wikes" hurricanes and that daddy's cousin Will used to be a hurricane. Tonight he says he's afraid, but I think he's just tired.

Finally tonight, when the weather folks issued a "hurricane wind warning" for College Station, I decided that we really could have some damage. I'm not really worried so much as I don't want to look stupid - you know, be that guy on the news who says, "Golly. I heard something 'bout a hurricane in College Station but I thought they was just kiddin'."

So I took pictures all around the casa of the stuff that would have to be replaced if the roof blew off or something. Then I asked Trey to make sure the flashlights had batteries. Then I remembered the two boxes in the top of my closet that are irreplaceable - one contains items related to my brother-in-law James and his death and the other contains items that came from my grandmother (things she made by hand, mainly). I asked Trey where to put stuff like that, and he kind of laughed at me. Anyway, I stuffed them in the tiny hall closet on the shelf along with our wedding album.

The only other irreplaceable thing here is our pictures - most of which are on the computer. If you're watching the news and see a crazy lady in her pajamas chasing a CPU down the street, just pretend she doesn't look like me.

And then I took some serious cough medicine - the kind I had to get at the doctor today because wishing my cough away doesn't seem to be very effective. Suddenly this storm seems less important than some sleep.

So I send thoughts and prayers to all of the people in Ike's path, even those people (*ahem* idiots *ahem*) who chose to stay when some important person (I don't remember who) said words like "worse case scenario" and "certain death." It's a comforting thing to believe we'll all be fine and everything else is just stuff. Happy Hurricane, I suppose.