Hurricane Chris?

I used to have a false sense of security where hurricanes were concerned. I lived through Betsy and Camille, but I was too young to remember in detail how damaging they could be. We lost some shingles and screens then. There wasn't two weeks, or more, without electricity and our phone lines never went down in '65 and '67, respectively.

After living through some hardships caused by Hurricane Katrina, not to mention the loss of my retail business, I am now a scaredy pants. I love running water and air conditioning. I can live without for a while, and then I start to get testy.

When the news and weather people mention tropical this or that, I start to fidget and pace. We have a game plan this time. We didn't evacuate before, even though we were under mandatory evacuation orders from our parish president, because lines to get on the Interstate and get out of here were backed up for miles and miles. Not that we needed it then, but gas was nowhere to be found near here at the last moment. Our truck was full, but my car wasn't. We had dogs and cats that we couldn't bear to leave, and we thought we would be safe from harm. Our trees protected us, going down on the side of the house and preventing the other falling trees from getting to us. Still, one huge Cypress tree came down over my son's room and cracked through the frame of the attic. We feel fortunate that all that happened to us was a demolished shed, fence, that one tree on the roof and deck, and some other minor losses in comparison to people whose houses, and all the belongings in it, were totalled. I didn't really want to be in retail anyway.

Now, there is nothing holding us back from leaving. Michael will take our two dogs and one child, probably the boy. And I will have the two cats, and probably the hamster, and the girl child. We haven't organized a list of things to take with us when we leave, just in case we lose the house and everything in it while we are gone. I guess those things would include photo albums, insurance papers, maybe some letters. I'll probably know at the last moment what I find important and necessary. We have friends who lost everything except for the two days of clothes they packed for their mini-vacation. Many lessons were learned last year.