Storm

On Thursday, Tropical Storm Andrea blew through our area. And of course, that was the day Bob was scheduled for a doctor's appointment. And that doctor was the foot surgeon that has taken us over a month to get into see. And we had planned to walk there (or to be more exact, I had planned to push his wheelchair there) being it's only two blocks away. The appointment was set for 12:30.

All morning, I was watching the weather reports. It had poured around 4:00 a.m. and since we'd had scattered showers. The weather reports had the rain chance at 100%. Though the stuff seemed to be coming in bands and I figured, if we were lucky, we could slip over there during one of the drier spells.

So, I got Bob bathed, dressed, hooked to his condom cath leg bag, and shaved. I got out our rain ponchos. And packed our bags, so to speak, getting all the stuff I need for him into my purse and his backpack.

Then at about 11:45 a.m., there was a sudden burst of wind. Then it was raining sideways. Beating against the house and windows so hard you couldn't see outside. I heard a loud crash on the front porch. When I went to the front door, I saw that our bamboo roll-up shade had unrolled was flying free like a huge flag. The thing was whipping back and forth and banging into the porch swing which was smashing into the adirondack chair.

So I dashed outside and tried to roll up the bamboo shade, but found the cords that roll it up were gone, broken by the wind, and that wind was blowing, I mean really blowing, I would later learn, 35-40 miles per hour.  There I was, fighting with that shade in the wind, trying to secure it somehow, but the thing kept whipping out of my hands, then smacking me in the face, nearly knocking me over, and I finally gave up.

And then the shade smashed into my four tiered planter which crashed to the floor, dumping all the potted plants and knocking into another table and wiping out yet another potted plant. So I ran back into the house and grabbed the step stool. Because I had to pull that shade off its hooks before it wrecked everything on the porch. To get to the shade, I had to get behind the madly swinging porch swing.

Then there I was, teetering on a step stool, in 35 mile per hour winds and rain, scared shitless, porch swing banging into my back and shade flying at my face and me, trying to reach up and unhook that darn shade. But somehow I did it.

By then it was noon, and I was soaked, and I thought, no way are we going to make that doctor's appointment in this weather. So I called and rescheduled the appointment. And I swear, almost immediately after I hung up the phone, the rain stopped.

And fifteen minutes later, the wind died down.

And it was dry for the rest of the afternoon.

Thus begins another Hurricane Season...

We see the foot surgeon in two weeks, weather permitting.