Hurricanes, Mo-Jo, Mo-Fo

Much of my family lives in Florida, the panhandle area, where hurricane Ivan is bearing down right now. My mom is already evacuated-- to Mississippi, with my oldest sister. My younger sister's kids live there, and they're old enough to take care of themselves, but are anxious about the big-badass that is headed their way. The house is reinforced with hurricane straps, and pretty high off of the flood prone, danger zone. They should be fine-- it might be uncomfortable for a while if they lose power & the place is trashed, but if they are smart and stay put and don't do stupid things like go surfing, everything will be okay.

But it got me thinking about my own growing up there and the hurricanes we faced. We generally lived in dumps, and often near the beach. None of the hurricanes we had to evacuate for were particularly bad-- most of them hit elsewhere or petered out before they got to our area. I have sat up all night on the floor of a high school hurricane shelter, eaten dried-scrambled-eggs handed out by helpful Red Cross employees, snuck out to feed my cat, who was in the car cause I didn't want to leave him at the house we thought might be flooded, but the shelter didn't allow pets. During one, my sister was in the hospital delivering my now 19 year old nephew, and we slept in the band room on a big platform stage area. It was always a cause for a heady feeling of excitement and fear and happiness to have a hurricane come. Happiness? Well, duh! We don't get snow days, but we do get out of school for hurricanes! What teen doesn't love that!?

But this Ivan fellow looks like he might not be a very happy thing to be around. In my aerobics classes the last two times, I've made students do an "I" step, and joked "let's do some voodoo. While you do the "I" step, think of Ivan, and make him get smaller so he doesn't bash my family." They looked at me kinda funny. But I think the power of prayer, and/or hope is strong. Let's all hope Ivan isn't as terrible as he has the potential to be. Let's all hope some of that energy is dissipated and spreads to other places where it will do good instead of destroy. Here in my part of Texas, and in other places, hurricanes don't seem like such a big deal, and I remember when I lived up in Washington, one of the hurricanes that hit my family I didn't even know about till it was almost there cause I never watched the weather. But that damn Ivan is down there in the gulf, spreading bands of orange and red almost the entire width from Florida to Texas. He's a bad mo-fo. He needs some "anti-organization" mo-jo. So here goes. "Ivan Ivan Go Away, don't come again some other day". :)