Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Plans for Summer? You Gotta Be Kidding!

Where I live it is always summer, and any summer is dangerous here, if you dare stand under the sun for long. Still, it is not only the sun’s heat that burns. From June 1 to the end of November, it is also the official hurricane season, which means, should a hurricane hit our town, wherever we are vacationing, we have to rush back before the hurricane, secure the place, and get out of there in a hurry if the hurricane is over category three. Practically, undoable, given the circumstances.

Unfortunately for the hurricane-zone residents, the weather people cannot exactly pinpoint where the hurricane will hit, until two days before or even until the last minute, depending on the hurricane’s craftiness. Can you imagine the pickle we can be in, if we dared to go away in summer? Hubby and I, therefore, declared summer vacations to be out of the question for us.

Talking about summers, let me explain a few things about our hurricane preparations. First, everything outside of the house has to be carted in. That includes flowerpots, garden hoses, wind chimes, birdfeeders, and anything you can think of as not being stationary. Then the shutters have to be put up and secured. Inside the house, we have to store food but the kind of food that won’t go bad, which means cans, fruit that can last a few days, and bread with strong preservatives. Health-food lovers need not apply! We also need water, lots of it, and not only for drinking. When the hurricane messes up the infrastructure, underground pipes become affected. So we need water for washing up.

When the hurricane warning is announced, aside from the bottles and bottles of drinking water, we also store water in the bathtub and large trashcans that I bought for this purpose only. It is not only the water but the electricity that may be lacking during and after the hurricane; therefore, we also need an unbelievable amount of batteries for flashlights and radios.

Some people have installed generators underground, which work better and are less riskier than the ones above ground. Since hubby and I are two klutzes, we don’t use any generators. ‘Better safe than sorry’ is our motto when it comes to things that may turn tricky on us. Thus the batteries and a mechanical crank-powered radio and flashlights are in our hurricane war-chest.

Not only the electricity and underground water pipes can be affected, however. There is always the danger of sewer leakage and sewer-pipe breakage. We are told not to flush the toilets when we pee, but save the flushing for only the number two.

Even after the hurricane, if we evacuate the hurricane zone, we have to rush back home to secure our place and assess the damages because the earlier we apply to our insurance, the better are our chances of getting a refund; that is, if the roads to travel on the way back home are fine.

We have been through two hurricanes fifteen days apart in 2004 with other couples in our house because our cement-block house is said to be sturdier, and the other couples’ houses were wood-frame. From where I stand, I prefer to stay home and weather the storm. Hubby likes to escape. The weirdo that I am, during the past hurricanes, I sort of rode the waves, watching the others cower and cringe. Hubby didn’t enjoy the experience much, and those hurricanes were about category 2.5 to 3. After they passed, luckily for us, only the outside structures in the pool area, such as the mansard roof over the pool, the outside bathroom and the shed, were damaged. Weaker houses had a lot more destruction, unfortunately. Some people lost everything.

Another lucky thing for us, in 2004, was that our governor at the time was Jeb Bush, and being the then-president’s brother, he commandeered help and security to our town immediately. Yet, the hurricane scare wasn’t over. In 2005, another hurricane came our way. At that time, our son, who was living in northern Florida, came and carried us to his home, but that hurricane was a weak one and did nothing to us. For the houses who were still waiting for their insurances’ approvals for the repairs of the damages from the year 2004, however, it was a disaster.

It isn’t the hurricanes alone that mess up the lives of the residents, but the aftermath of them. It is next to impossible to find companies to repair the homes, as all the businesses and warehouses also become damaged. Consequently, the job becomes open to the companies from around the area where the hurricane hit, if we can get them early enough. Most people can’t do that because they have to wait for the *&!#* approval from their insurances.

Each year, we are alerted to the hurricanes, here. Most don’t show up, but when they do, their performance is for the ages.

By the way, when I read this prompt, I laughed out loud, and I also felt very young, like a grade-school kid. A good thing in my age. Can you recall how many times, in school, we had to write about how we spent our summer vacations or how we planned to spend it?

Well, here is the answer. The way I am going to spend this summer will be listening to the weathermen’s pearls of scary wisdom every day and crossing my fingers, hoping we are spared yet another year from the hurricanes.


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Prompt: What are your plans for the summer?