Go Fish Galvez

Never thought I’d be praying for a tropical storm and certainly not looking forward to a visit from anyone named Don (with a wink to Mom—inside joke!), but there it is.

Truth be told, I never thought I’d be praying at all, but with this exceptional, protracted drought we’ve been suffering through, your humble blog author and resident island agnostic is now poised to fall on her knees, tear at her hair, and beseech the Higher Power to intervene with at least a little rainy manna from Heaven.

With the formation of Tropical Storm Don after its unremarkable birth in the Caribbean, I’ve been following the weather forecasts each evening with nail-biting anticipation.

But with each passing day, the forecast models have been pushing Don’s landfall farther and farther to the south and west of crispy old Galveston. As of tonight’s lackluster predictions, it looks as if we’ll be very lucky to wring even one to three inches of rain from the storm’s outer bands before it flies through the region at its current peppy clip and dissipates somewhere over New Mexico.

Speaking of New Mexico, the Roswellians, at least (and I’m talking the Greys here), should be pleased.

All this talk of late about tropical storms has got me thinking again about my continuing relative lack—no, total lack—of hurricane preparedness and the need to pull my head out of (careful now!) the sand and focus on this very important issue. Toward that end, I sat down at the laptop the other night and made my first wee step: I ordered a NOAA radio, a five-gallon potable water bladder (“bladder” not being the ideal word, let me point out to the Hurricane Store advertising copywriter, to describe a vessel from which one drinks), and a flashlight that never needs batteries (it charges via hand crank). This minimal effort, at least, helped me rest a little easier. Well, that and the glass of wine.

Of course, radios and water bladders are the cheap part. Proper storm shutters for the house and garage apartment out back—now that will be another matter entirely. In fact, I would hazard a guess that it would cost me less money to rebuild the demolished house than to outfit it beforehand with modern hurricane shutters. A slight exaggeration, I’m hoping, but that painful investigation will have to wait until the greenbacks are flowing more fluidly again.

For now, the good part is that this old 1937 home has somehow managed to weather the storms over the decades with its original, and apparently adequate, wooden shutters intact and still functional, which I will batten down this season should the need arise.

And indeed the need may arise, as we slip into August, and then September, that unquietest month of all…