Apocalyptic Flibbertigibbets

There's a category 2 hurricane named Sandy coming up the coast from the south which has already done great damage in Jamaica.  Sandy is expected to hit the Atlantic Seaboard - Ocean City, MD, to be exact - sometime on Sunday evening or Monday morning - just about the time a cold front will barrel down from Canada, bringing cold weather and, in some places, snow.

There's also a full moon and high tides.

It's what folks call a 'perfect storm'.

Translation: Head to the store to buy "the whites" - bread, milk and toilet paper.

I'm not really worried about being without electricity. We'll probably be evacuated, anyway. We have a Red Cross gadget that runs on batteries - or, you can wind it up and it will recharge itself. You can get AM and FM radio stations, but it also has its own Weather Station with a continuous loop of information about tides, winds, waves, temperatures, etc.

It also has a flashlight, a flash signal, and a siren as well as a place to plug in your cell phone to recharge it.

If the Rapture comes, we should know about it and let Jesus know where we are so we won't miss being swooped up to heaven.

We also have some wonderful friends who live inland who have graciously invited us - and our three pups - to seek shelter with them if - when, actually - we are evacuated.

The locals here pretty much shrug off the whole evacuation thing. "Weather people - they call them meteorologists, they call them these days -  act like silly flibbertigibbets," said one of my neighbors.

I had to look up the word as I had never heard it. Well, I thought I remembered it in the song from Sound of Music.

"How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbertigibbet. A will-o'-the-wisp. A clown." 

But, I never really knew the word they were singing - so I sort of smooshed over the word as I sang it - until I looked up the lyrics.

It's Middle English in origin, for a meaningless representation of chattering, but it has gained the meaning of an impish child.  Usually a young woman. Or, a gossip.

You knew it had to be a negative about a woman.

I suppose 'perfect storms' can turn even the most mature, stable person into a flibbertigibbet. Two of our friends came over this afternoon, at the behest of Ms. Conroy, to secure the deck furniture, lashing it to the railing. I had done this last year, when we had a storm. All by myself. I posted pictures on FaceBook and someone made fun of my knot tying.

Okay, so I wasn't a Girl Scout. My family didn't have money for that sort of thing. But, you know, I did alright. Nothing flew off the deck. No one got hurt.

What concerns me more is that there are still two boats in the water near our house. I'm sure they will be removed tomorrow.  There's been a veritable parade of boats pass the house today. Everyone bringing them down to the landing to haul them out of the water.

Looks like the Annual Thanksgiving Parade of Boats will be pretty thin this year.

And, I suspect we'll just leave the deck furniture out there, lashed to the deck, for the rest of the winter. Which means, of course, that if we are of a mind, and the weather cooperates, to have Thanksgiving dessert on the deck, we'll have to drag the chairs from the house out onto the deck.

It will be fine.  I'll be grateful for the good weather.

What concerns me most is the two new purple Crepe Myrtles and the Boxwood Roses we just planted a few months ago. I will be very sad if they are damaged by the flooding.

So, all the talk is about the weather - what we'll do, what to pack for the evacuation, what foods will hold up well without electricity, how to cook over an open flame, what books to bring, making sure the iPad, iPod and cell phones are all well charged.

Blah, blah, blah.

You might think it was the coming of the End of the World.

We've become Apocalyptic Flibbertigibbets.

I think perfect storms deserve fancy sounding terms. I mean, otherwise, they wouldn't be so 'perfect' would they? They'd just be ordinary, every day, common storms.

We simply can't have that, now can we?

Me? I went and had my hairs cut this afternoon. When Hurricane Sandy makes her appearance, I want to be presentable. 

If you turn on your television set to the local news station around here, you'll see lots of Apocalyptic Flibbertigibbets. They call them 'newscasters'.  Some of them are called 'meteorologists'.  All of them 'round here are male. Which makes me giggle.

Politics and the weather.  Weather and politics.

A more perfect storm you'd be hard pressed to find.