Peanuts, anyone?

OK, I'm seriously already over hurricane season. Rebecca is not good when it comes to hurricanes. In most situations, I am cool as a cucumber. I handle things. But when I hear the term "evacuate low-lying areas" I get all sorts of freaked out.

Being from New England, I'll take blizzards any day. You don't have to evacuate for a blizzard, unless you're like 105 years old or something. You stay put in a blizzard, put your nose up against the freezing window and gauge how fast the snow is coming down by watching it in the triangular patch of light coming from the street lamp. Then, maybe you groan, thinking about all the shoveling you'll have to do. But you stay put, you get out the candles, you play a game of Trivial Pursuit, you keep the TV tuned to Dick Albert the weatherman, and you chill. It's fun and a little special. Mother Nature is blanketing you with a gorgeous, glittery, swathe of snow, not kicking your ass with wind gusts and throwing trees at you like it were the caber toss at the Highland Games.

My version of freaked out is not like girly, shirvel up and cry freaked out. I don't shudder at every thunder clap. I say to myself, "OK, Rebecca, let's prepare. Let's get some shit done." Then I do things that in hindsight make absolutely no sense. Paranoia also sents in.

For example, last year, when I was told to evacuate and had about an hour to do so before they closed the bridge, I ran home to get some stuff together and realized that the spare room which my now ex was using as the shrine to Evercrack (seriously, I am one dark elf away from having no faith in the male species) and the downstairs bathroom that he used were complete pig sties. I had a vision of those newscasts where the wall to a house is ripped off but everything else is intact and everyone watching the five o'clock news can see all your stuff like they were looking in a doll house.

I freaked.

So I cleaned. I scrubbed the bathroom, picked up all the shit in the spare room. Folded clothes. Dusted (?) This is what my brain focused on while awaiting Hurricane Charley: possible public embarassment due to a messy house.

Then I packed a bag and high-tailed it by myself (long story) to my safe little hotel room in.....Orlando. Um, yeah. You guys remember the hurricane took a sharp right and guess what? Went RIGHT OVER my hotel room.

But before that I packed. And when I got to the hotel and unpacked, this is what I found in the suitcase:

My most expensive pair of four-inch heels
Two Corona t-shirts from my "beer girl" days
A bottle of Shiraz
A brand new roll of Bounty paper towels
A giant bottle of rubbing alcohol
My important documents
A flashlight
A 12-snack pack box of planters peantus

So this season, if you see me walking around in four inch heels and a beer girl t-shirt, gripping a bottle of shiraz by the neck, just know that I'm not a drunk hooker. Drunk hookers don't have peanuts and rubbing alcohol. I'm just a freaked out northerner who doesn't yet know how to properly prepare.

This year, I think my hurricane shopping will consist of purchasing a plane ticket to Boston.