You Might Be a Floridian If...

You know the four seasons really are: almost summer, summer,
not summer but really hot, and Christmas.

"Down South" means Key West

"Panhandling" means going to Pensacola.

You think no-one over 70 should be allowed to drive.

Flip-flops are everyday wear.

Shoes are for business meetings and church.

No, wait, flip flops are good for church too

Socks are only for bowling

Orange juice from concentrate makes you sick

Sweet tea can be served at any meal.

An alligator once walked through your neighborhood.

You smirk when a game show's "Grand Prize" is a trip to Florida.

You measure distance in minutes.

You have a drawer full of bathing suits, and one sweatshirt.

You get annoyed at the tourists who feed seagulls.

You never use an umbrella because you know the rain will be over in
five minutes

All the local festivals are named after a fruit. (Although we do have a Shrimp Festival, and I'm not sure Swamp Cabbage is a fruit...)

A mountain is any hill 100 feet above sea level.

A good parking place has nothing to do with distance from the store,
but everything to do with shade.

Your winter coat is made of denim

You can tell the difference between fire ant bites and mosquito bites

You're younger than thirty but some of your friends are over 65

It's not "pop." It's "soda" or "coke."

Anything under 70 is chilly.

You've hosted a hurricane party.

You go to a theme park for an afternoon, and know when to get on the
best rides.

You pass on the right and honk at the elderly.

You understand the futility of exterminating cockroaches.

You can pronounce Okeechobee, Kissimmee, Withlacoochee, Okahumpka and
Loxahatchee.

You understand why it's better to have a friend with a boat than have a
boat yourself.

You've driven through Yeehaw Junction.

Bumper stickers on the pickup in front of you include various fish, the
NRA and a confederate flag.

You were 8 before you realized they made houses without pools.

You were 12 when you first met someone who couldn't swim.

You've worn shorts and used the A/C on Christmas. (We actually ran the A/C once, trying to make it cold enough so we could have a fire in our fireplace).

You know what the "stingray shuffle" is and why it's important!

You could swim before you could read

You have to drive north to get to The South

You know that no other grocery store can compare to Publix.

Every other house had blue roofs in 2004-2005

You know that anything under a Category 3 just isn't worth waking up for.

You dread lovebug season.

You are on a first name basis with the Hurricane list. They aren't Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Frances...but Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.

You know what a snowbird is and you hate them. (Well, that might be a bit harsh. We only hate the sheer volume of them clogging the roads!)

You know why flamingos are pink.

You think a six-foot alligator is actually pretty average.

You haven't seen snow.

Tornadoes/Tornado warnings don't scare you, and you laugh when your friends from outside of Florida get scared by lightning.

You eat ice cream cones in the winter, because it's finally cool enough so that it won't melt instantly down your arm

You save your sweater for summer when everyone's A/C is so cold, you are freezing in their houses or cars

(Thank you to my youngest son for sending me this! My sons are true Crackers, not transplanted Hoosiers like me, and will never let me forget it...)

All's Well That Ends Well

Now back to our regularly scheduled lives... Fay has gone away, without leaving heartache in her wake. Ok, I'll quit now. My parents are fine, though they got it worse than we did, rocking in their little RV and hearing of tornados a few miles away. Today all is back to normal. That's the weird thing about hurricanes anyway, it's not afterwards that's a problem, unless they nail us. It's not during either, which is usually pretty exhilarating. It's before!

There is nothing straightforward about preparing for a possible hurricane. We have days of warnings, sure, but hurricanes are notoriously rebellious, going where they will and not where anyone thought they would. That makes running from them a dicey proposition. You must board up your house, provide for your pets, miss work, head out in to murderous traffic on one of the few roads out of Florida, and figure out where to go, and hope there is an available hotel room. Going south or east means possibly getting hit worse than if you stay put, but going north could have the same effect, not to mention the thing could miss Florida altogether and you've missed work for nothing. Plus there are the unexpected things, like this Monday when a tanker exploded north of Tampa, closing down northbound I-75, the main evacuation route.

Or you can stay home. Which is frankly far preferable, but exhausting none the less. We were running around trying to get the right amount of bottled water and canned food for at least 3 days, which doesn't sound like a big deal, except I didn't know if it would just be the 2 of us, or if any of our sons would come, not to mention the grandparents. We had to fill the car tank, because there isn't always gas after a storm, but lines were very, very long. The station we were at was out of regular gas, but we were able to get premium. Next, batteries - Walmart was out completely, but BJ's had plenty. We had to decide whether or not to try to run the generator if the power went out. We didn't have a generator when Charley, Frances, Jeanne, Ivan and Wilma hit, but then we got one and this is our first opportunity to use it. It's not an easy decision, because not only does it cost $40 a day in gas to run it, but more people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from their generators than from any of the 5 hurricanes I mentioned. The heat was oppressive too, the air still and heavy. Monday I spent cleaning up the yard and porches of possible projectiles, doing laundry and dishes in case there was no water or electricity for a few days or weeks afterwards, making ice, cleaning house, cooking food that might spoil, checking on family, and a million other details that needed tending to. At one point, I grabbed the carton of ice cream, removed the lid, poured syrup inside and began eating. Hey, cleaning out the freezer is an essential hurricane-preparedness task! Plus storms make me hungry.

Storm day was actually kind of cozy. Very dark skies, lots and lots of rain and strong wind, and much cooler temperatures, added to our exhaustion from preparing, made it a good day to laze around taking video of cows in rain, among other activities, like eating! Thankfully there was no real harm done, so today we are rather sluggishly trying to get up to speed - and burn off all the calories Tropical Storm Fay brought with her! They say there is another one forming - but I don't want to think about it. Maybe tomorrow, said Scarlett.

Thank you once again for your prayers and well wishes!

Cows Weather Tropical Storm Fay

I feel a little like the optimist that jumped from the 80-story building. At every floor, he yelled to his friends, "All right so far!"

We are fine. In the first place, Fay is a Tropical Storm, not a hurricane. Big difference. We are having some interesting gusts with copious amounts of sometimes horizontal rain. But the house isn't shaking, and our neighbor's roof shingles aren't peeling off, like in Wilma. The power was off for a while, but obviously, it's on now, here anyway. There are traffic lights out, power lines down, and debris like limbs and things in the roads, also flooded roads. But as I plan to stay put, that doesn't affect me at the moment.

It has been raining and blowing too hard to have the front door open, but we have a somewhat sheltered back porch, and if we sit far enough back we can watch the storm. While we were doing so, these poor cows came plodding across the sodden pasture. They looked so miserable we felt sorry for them, and my husband couldn't resist taking some video, which we sent in to the local t.v. station.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and good wishes, they mean a lot to me. YOU mean a lot to me! I am a little worried about my parents, who went to the East Coast in their RV, and are possibly getting this worse over there. Once I hear from them, I'll feel better. More later!

All Things Considered...

I may be computer-less for a while. Don't know exactly when, but it seems inevitable. First of all, our incredibly handy and talented middle son is putting in new flooring for us all over the whole house, and at some point the computers will be disconnected and shoved in a corner for a while. But it is possible that before that happens, Tropical Storm Fay could develop in to a hurricane and smash right in to us, which almost by definition equals no power. So if I am MIA that is why.

We are preparing, and I'm trying not to grouse. Luckily I'm married to a genius :) and he's building special frames for the windows that we can just slide clear hurricane panels in to, so we'll be able to do it even when the boys aren't around to come help us - but this year he's still in the process. Yesterday all three of our wonderful sons came over to help. The plywood is harder to put up, plus it makes the inside of the house dark and cave-like. So I really like the ones with the clear panels!

I'll keep on keepin' on as long as possible, and if I'm out for a while, that's why. And at some point I'll show -n-tell about all the projects going on around here!

Hurricane Season!

Well, it's summer, and that means HURRICANE SEASON! I used to think it was just a chance for the merchants to make money in the off-season, by scaring us natives into buying batteries, tarps and bottled water. Ever since 2004 when Charley hit, we take it all a bit more seriously. At first it seemed to be a non-event like so many others. It wasn't but a Category 2, and it was headed north of us anyway. Then, on August 13th, as we sat down to lunch and some sports, the weather man broke in to breathlessly announce that Charley had veered south and was coming in too close for comfort. About the time we absorbed that news, he added that it was upgraded to a Cat 3. My hubby and older sons headed to the garage to prepare plywood for the windows, and while they were out there Charley was upgraded to Cat 4! Yikes, this was getting serious! They put the plywood sheet over the last window in a fine, sharp rain, like needles on the skin, and then the electricity went off. Hurricane Charley blew sideways to the house, and a wooded lot beside us spared us quite a bit, but we watched out the front door as tree tops swirled in circles, all around one way, back around the other, SNAP - and the whole top of the tree crashed to the ground. Then the wind veered around straight at the house and we rushed to shut the door and put towels under it to keep the rain from blowing under - it veered again and we watched some more.

By evening it was all over. Everyone in the neighborhood emerged wide-eyed from their houses, checking to see that others were ok, comparing notes and looking at all the trees that had either snapped off, or come completely up by the roots. My mother's lavender jacaranda tree had fallen over as if a giant hand had laid it gently down, brushing her front door at the top and a vehicle on each side, harming nothing. Other neighbors weren't so lucky, but no one was injured at least. That night we lit a whole lot of candles and played poker to take our minds off the stifling heat, listening to the concert the happy frogs were giving in the cow pasture out back. The next day everyone got busy, people all over town helping each other clean up yards, distribute ice and water, and tending to each other's needs. We cooked up the food out of the freezer so it wouldn't spoil, sweltering over a camp stove with baggies of ice on our heads. After a couple of days, our electricity was restored, but others waited weeks, and those on wells had not water either. Blue tarps sprouted on roofs like mushrooms. Most of the traffic lights were out, so everyone had to drive very carefully, using the four-way-stop method. Before anyone could recover fully, within the next month, three more hurricanes hit Florida. Then the next year, Wilma hit and we had to put on a new roof after that one. No hurricanes have hit us since, unless you count the winds of change in the insurance industry that hit us hard following the storms! But I no longer look on preparation as an unnecessary hassle. If we don't need the things we've stockpiled, someone else is bound to. When that happens, we all donate gladly, our sincere empathy mixed with relief that we were spared.