Raising 'Cane

(Thanks, Gard!)

I had truly hoped to sleep in my own bed before (1) the NEXT hurricane blew through town and (2) the anniversary of Her Horribleness. While #1 got the best of me, there's still hope for #2. But I'm waiting to hear from my handyfriend as to whether he'll be able to make it to town this weekend or not.

By comparison, for me, Humberto was just a baby hurricane. Of course, those who experienced significant damage won't see things the same way. I truly feel for those who got clobbered this time around.

When I went to bed on Wednesday, Humberto was still just a tropical storm. The lights had flickered once or twice and the dog wasn't happy about that. But they came back on, so no one in my house was particularly concerned. Snoozin' and cruisin' was the order of the night.

That is, until the dog decided to crawl into bed with me about 3am-ish.

We still had lights, so that wasn't it. There wasn't any thunder at that point, so that wasn't it either. The rain was pattering on the roof and windows, but that usually doesn't bother her, so that wasn't it. There must have been something about the wind blowing that made the Penster decide to snuggle. She's not much of a snuggle-dog.

Finally after spending about an hour trying to calm her down, I gave up, went to the den and turned on the tv. To my vast surprise, scrolling across the bottom of the screen was "Inland hurricane warning in effect"! Hurricane! Where'd this hurricane come from? How on earth was a storm over dry land becoming a hurricane? (Ok - it was really early in the morning, so give me a break!) I'd certainly decided I'd lost my mind and was misreading what was on the screen. Then the weatherperson came onscreen and announced that Humberto had become a minimal category 1 hurricane before coming ashore somewhere around ..... at that point I quit listening.

A hurricane? Nobody'd ever said anything about a 'cane. Uhoh! I just remembered that there was a small stepladder and an empty can of paint on the back patio which should have been secured earlier. Don't worry. I didn't jump into clothes and try to go and fix it. I just fretted about it for a while.

Then the power went out, for good. So the Penster and I went back to bed, her to cower and me to console. There wasn't much else we could do at the moment.

Next thing I knew, a phone was ringing and it was 8:30am. All quiet, except for the ringing. Alllllllll quiet. No a/c. No refrigerator hum. No lights anywhere. And still no lights today.

Ah, well! The whole thing could have been significantly worse. I'm grateful that things have calmed down and there's sun on the horizon for the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed! I'm hoping to meet that second deadline, and it looks like it just may be possible!