The Perfect Storm

This morning at 7 a.m., I turned on the Weather Channel.
I'm going to have to admit that before yesterday, I didn't know where the Weather Channel was, but talk on the news about Tropical Storm Isaac and the Republican Convention in Tampa led me to search for the Weather Channel. Not because I'm attending or I'm worried about the delegates, but because Spencer is now in college close by.
The first taste of adulthood, a beach, and a hurricane may just add up to the perfect storm.

I first mentioned the storm to Spencer on Saturday while on FaceTime. FaceTime is like Skype except we can do it on our iPhones. I caught him still in bed at 12:30.
"Yeah, we thought we'd just ride out the storm here. Just hunker down," he said, his eyes bleary as he lay shirtless in bed.
I explained that it didn't look like the college was going to allow that. They had an evacuation plan to take the students inland. He had a meeting at 4 on Saturday.
I finally reached him again Saturday evening. Yes, the college was heading toward evacuation, but he and some friends had decided on their own plan. They were going to get a couple of hotel rooms in Orlando.
"What?" I might have screeched.
"I don't want to go to some camp," he said.
He ran through a list of friends he'd known for two weeks now. They planned to drive to Orlando, hang out during the Tropical Storm.
I started adding up costs, gas, hotel, food. No supervision. A bunch of 18-year-olds in a hotel room. This looked like a disaster.
"This might be the shortest college career in history if you run out of money after three weeks," I warned him in a bad mothering moment. "You know you still need to pay for your fall books."
"Some people have already gotten kicked out," he replied.
"Okay, I'm proud that you're working hard," I said, pulling back from the brink of even worse parenting. "I just don't think this is a good decision."
Later that night, another email from the college explained that the students should bring their books for their classes and instruction. I called Spencer again to "reason" with him.
He was quick to cut me off.
"I'm going with the college," he said.
And I exhaled in relief.
The college was busing the students inland to a camp, but they would be together, organized, under someone else's supervision. And the college would pick up the tab.
I don't know if Spencer reconsidered, or maybe the parents of his friends were more persuasive, or maybe the parents of his friends put their foot down. "No! You are not going."
However it happened, this afternoon, Spencer is scheduled to evacuate with the rest of the freshman at his college. Unless the storm changes course. Then, they might get to hunker down and watch the rain, the wind and the surf increase. Well, that will bring a whole other host of worries for me.
Update: Luckily for us, the storm did change course and the college decided around noon not to evacuate. Maybe his first instinct was right.
I hope all of those other college students and residents in the path of the storm are safe too.

Rising Waters

He hadn't been watching all the hoopla on the news, so he was totally unaware of the devastation that was headed his way.
"I was just sitting there in the bathtub when it came toward me -- a wall of water," recalls Tupi the cat.
"Nothing like that has ever happened before. It was a nightmare."
If Tupi had been watching the news, the 24-hour hurricane Irene coverage, he would have been prepared. He would have stocked up on extra food and barricaded himself in with sand bags, ready for that day someone actually turned on the shower when he was in the tub.
Tupi has since found a place to barricade himself and a friend until the "shower" has passed.
I don't mean to make fun of anyone who weathered Hurricane Irene in the past 24 hours. I know that many people have lost power and some people in North Carolina died from falling trees or flash floods.
We laughed this morning at the CNN 24-hour coverage. My feeling is that the news people have watched one too many disaster movie and are always disappointed when it doesn't live up to the catastrophe.
One female reporter was standing on a berm in front of a street and said the water in the street was a foot high and rising. Then she stepped down into it and it actually just came up above her foot. Not "a foot" high, but "her foot" high. Then a car drove past and kind of waited for her to get out of the way so it could get through. Oops. Maybe she was exaggerating just a bit. It was all a little ridiculous.
The camera focused on a downed tree branch and crews working to remove it. What destruction! Then a jogger slowly ran past in the background. Okay, maybe things weren't so bad. The news programs were ridiculous, as if no one in the world had faced such devastation. Truthfully, to the media, if no one in New York has lived through it, then it hasn't ever happened.
I'm breathing a sigh of relief that New York dodged a hurricane bullet, and I'm hoping that the overreaction doesn't make people ignore the warnings next time a storm is on the way.
Mostly, though, I'm hoping Tupi the cat realizes the danger he puts himself in when he hops into that porcelain bathtub. There, the waters can rise at any time.