Lift Up Your Hearts!

5:45 p.m.  Whew! People here are definitely taking this more seriously, sooner, than last time. On no day before Charley, not even the day it hit, did I find the stores particularly crowded. But I just returned from a marathon shopping event, and some of you know how much I dislike shopping. Nearly every store was a madhouse: Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target, Albertsons (grocery), and Pinch-a-Penny (pool store). I waited in the check-out line over half an hour at Albertsons; if I’d known how long it would be, I might have decided we didn’t really need any more supplies. I managed to get a large roll of plastic sheeting at Lowes, but both they and Home Depot are out of plywood clips. I knew they were out of plywood, but I had been hoping to get the clips and be prepared for whenever we could get plywood. But no go. As it turns out, a plywood supply truck had arrived between the time I called them and the time I arrived at Home Depot (less than two hours)—but the new shipment had sold out in 15 minutes! The only store that was not crowded was Office Max. I commented to the check-out clerk that I guessed other people didn’t think printer ink was an essential hurricane supply, and she replied, “No, but you should have seen it here before we ran out of “D” batteries.”

12:45 p.m. Too late. All the Home Depots in the area are out of plywood. THAT’s what we should have done last weekend instead of yardwork (Saturday) or Disney (Sunday). We’re fine with batteries—good thing, because they’re out of those, too—but I’ll need to make a trip to the pool store and the grocery store. I had been planning to go grocery shopping Friday, to buy what we need for the Daleys’ visit next week. I guess that had better wait, but I should pick up a few staples while I can.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004. Yes, it’s true. While we are still recovering from Charley, Frances has us in her sights. Not locked in, I trust—but right now we are sitting on the bull’s-eye. We are praying that Frances will take a harmless turn out into the Atlantic, not only because we don’t want to deal with another hurricane, but also because Heather, Jon, and Jonathan are supposed to be flying in Friday night. Jonathan, of course, has never been here, and Heather hasn’t been home since before she got married. We’ve been looking forward to this visit for a long time. However, just because we went through a hurricane with Janet, that doesn’t mean we’d like to experience one with Heather to even the score!

We still have many of our jugs of water in the freezer from last time. I’ve started freezing more, because we discovered that they are a wonderful way of having both ice and a fresh water supply. I just finished measuring our windows, and we hope to go out for plywood later today. (For those of you new to these updates, when Charley came we discovered that our window-protection boards had disappeared with our move.)