ok, so here we were happily doing our best to keep up with time and loving every moment of the connections we were feeling as if we were actually part of each others lives every day like we came home or woke up and smiled at each other and asked how our day went or how we slept and we were feeling all comfortable and family-like and depending on each other to be there every day and what happens...

Charley...

not the fragrance, even if it wasn't spelled differently...

yes, these are the Charley entries... today, ten days after Hurricane Charley slammed into casa de candoor and all the other casas around here, the power is back on (again and maybe there will be time to catch up with this life (in black and white, even)... so hear that didlididlidlidlidli music and picture the squiggly wiggly lines and blurring and dream sequence with me back to the beginning of the storm...

there we were, just a few hours ago, yesterday, hopeful and excited about the pending storm (cuz I love storms) and I went to work last night and everybody was talking about the weather... when would Charley get here... maybe Friday morning... maybe a little later... wait, more likely Friday evening... finally, the weather people all seem to agree it'll be Friday evening... and since I have Friday and Saturday nights off, Charley was timing her arrival perfectly... or was Charley a he?... well anyway, today was full of excitement and preparation... ok, I lied, today was full of excitement and procrastination (hey, they're both P words)... if only we had actually prepared, we might have had more fun...

along about mid-afternoon the rain started and a little later the winds started kicking up (the winds began to swish, the house, to twitch... or something like that)... and then it got really really dark... about 8PM, the storm was howling and blowing things around and the TV reports were predicting the eye to hit around here at 9PM... so it was almost time to slip out the door and feel the storm...

between 9 and 10PM, pow... shingles were flying everywhere... stupid neighbors who left lawn chairs and barbecue grills outside should be arrested for property destruction, endangering lives, and general stupidity... windows were breaking... trees were cracking and coming up right out of the ground... and with a series of loud transformer explosions, the power went out... so there we were, sitting in the dark with my one flashlight and my few candles and my few emergency battery lights and the three of us in the apartment... no ice, no coolers, no preparations at all, mostly because I decided I wasn't going to buy everything, but that's just life around here... so I went outside to watch the storm...

hanging on to a cement pillar at the end of the walkway outside of our apartments, a few crazy storm lovers watched and felt the fury for a while... after the first shingle hit me in the shoulder, I thought it might be time to head back inside... after all, the shingle had to swirl back around through stairwells to get to me... and when the neighbor next to me was hit in the head by another shingle, well, I went inside and rung out my clothes...

and finally, a few hours later, the storm was passing... winds continued, but the rain had stopped... the eye passed a few miles to the west of us, so the worst of the winds, the eastern wall, did in much of the neighborhood... out I went with my trusty flashlight to survey the surroundings... every tree within a half mile was uprooted... cars were buried under branches and leaves... my car (and Rasputin's) was between two trees and only suffered a few scratches due to flying shingles (and possibly due to the idiot who left out furniture)...

in a last minute urge to treat the storm seriously, I decided to head out in the car to see if anything was open (and yeah, to see how the rest of the neighborhood and area fared)... trees blocked the first six or seven ways I tried to get out to a main road... police and flares and downed power lines blocked the main roads when I finally did get past the trees and power lines down on the local streets... there was no way to go west, so finally I decided to drive out to the coast only to find that they closed all the stores on the East coast as well even though they still had power... the car radio said power was out for about twenty miles to the west and ten miles to the east along a strip cut through the center of Florida...

we did find a few expensive flimsy styrofoam coolers and overpriced batteries along the way and we went home to the mostly dark... the neighbors were out having an after-storm party, wandering among the downed trees and asking if anybody had any more beer... ah, some people obviously were prepared for Charley...

no harm, no foul...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
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