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.
