Everything that you wanted to know about the South can be quickly learned while waiting around for a hurricane to hit. The psyche of the Southerner is equal parts fear, guilt, and alcoholism.

Fear is the motivational factor for doing some real stupid shit, like standing outside in the roaring storm, climbing up avocado trees to harvest them, so that the falling fruit don't damage your car, and offering to help your boyfriend's mother with Shabbat dinner. All three are to be cautioned against, and certainly life threatening. Especially when Edith brings her own set of kosher cooking pots.

Guilt is the ensueing result of your petty indulgences in these fear inducing activities. You feel bad that you could have died standing in your own driveway while power lines swayed crazily back and forth, died falling out of the bough of a gnarled avocado tree, or died while the Edith stood over you, scowling, while you chopped up vegetables in your usual errant California manner. Apparently, it is written somewhere that all Miami Jewish mothers know to peel their cucumbers and cut their white button mushrooms at a 45 degree angle for the maximization of cooking surface area. Oy, the shame, the pain, the horror of it all. But, I am after all a shamless shiksa who doesn't know better, nu?

It is therefore no surprise that shameless shiksa's in the South do things like blend up margaritas for good Jewish sons in the middle of a hurricane to help take their minds of their neurotic mother. I am now, of course, speaking of the particularly Southern brand of alcoholism. It is not the West Coast, well-intentioned, lay out on the beach and grab-- beer-and-a-tan brand of drunkedness, which precedes more productive activities, such as surfing or hooking up with the girl behind the Starbucks counter. Neither is it the East Coast agenda-laden, heavily politiical drinking binge that usually accompanies a Harvard MBA, a juicy filet mignon, a blonde, and an important cigar. No, this is drinking because you are cooped up with a house full of lunatics, drinking because those 140 mph winds have leveled all structures, drinking because the worst of the storm is yet to come, and drinking beacuse, well, the end of the world could come tomorrow, so why not meet your Maker with a grin and a beer?And that, my friends, is the real reason why the South will never rise again.

So this is what preparing for a hurricane feels like. A lot of waiting in line at Home Depot while you, and ten thousand worried looking Cuban moms grab armloads of flashlights, batteries, and plywood. Waiting in line at the gas station on the corner of your street, where the price of gas has mysteriously gone up a good 5 cents/gallon since the hurricane warning took effect. Waiting in line at Publix and wondering how long you can survive on beans and crackers. That takes care of the purchases. Then, there's the packing.

I have reached the startling (delightful?) conclusion that aside from scandalous encounters and a couple of tube tops, everything that I own still fits into the trunk and backseat of my little car. Gloating sets in. I gloat because my next door neighbor, a surly Venezuelan, has just purchased his unit and filled it with expensive Italian furniture. I, on the other hand, am a renter, and not even a good one at that, because a year ago I took to the apartment with a can of hot pink paint and have never looked back since. And since none of the furniture belongs to me, I stand and laugh inwardly as The Venezuelan curses his bad timing. I gloat too, because this hurricane is timely, fortuitous even, as I am scheduled for a business trip to Phoenix next week, one of those cities that have swelled and settled with the undulations of the dot com phenomenon. The airports are shut down, I don't have to go, school's out for summer, school's out forever, yaay...

And of course, the growing sense of dread. Dread, because I've seen the pictures of vast wasteland called Punta Gorda after Hurricane Charley cut a good swath through it. Then again, Punta Gorda, and most of its residents, were pretty much waste to begin with.

Alright then, dread, because while I love rainstorms, thunderstorms lightning storms, storms of any kind, really.... I have yet to stand inside my house and quiver as the windows are concaved by the building atmospheric pressure outside.

Brain: But you're Californian. You're no stranger to natural disasters, you've been through all those earthquakes. Me: Yes, but I've slept through all of them... Yes, dread. That feeling that courses through your veins when your boyfriend tells you over the phone that his parents are planning to "ride out the storm" at his place. "His parents" being the possesser of that sentence. Ah yes, Saul and Edith, qute possibly the oddest married couple east of the Mississippi river. Saul of little stature and huge malignant ear growths, Saul of the soggy straw gardening hats of which he is so fond, Saul of the silver Rolls Royce which he never drives but instead leaves parked in his driveway because a Mercedes would be too nouveau riche. But you know what, Saul's ok. I like Saul. Saul never bothered me none, because Saul knows to mind his own business, like any other geriartric individual.

Then there's Edith. Edith, Edith, Edith darling, 6ft, 160 lbs of booming Jewess authority. Edith of the dry Chicken Kiev and dryer Gentile jokes. Edith of the orthopedic shoes and the unexplainable condition where one of her legs is shorter than the other. Edith of the droopy scowl and crossed eyes whenever you wade into their pool with *gasp* a bikini on. Now, see, I don't like Edith. Edith bothers me a lot, because she assumes that all Gentiles are wholly ignorant of all facets of Judaism, nevermind that you have more Jewish friends that her own son does. Edith, unlike Saul, does not know how to mind her own business, and that fact gives me Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

So while winds of up to 144 mph are whiplashing through the Bahamas at this very moment, and rainfall of up to 10 inches is expected, the only thing that seems to concern me is: there might be a storm raging outdoors, but indoors is where the real shit will hit the fan.