Raise your hand if Ernesto is coming to your house!

As of 5 p.m. it appears that Ernesto will visit several regulars on this blog. Debi and Caroline are on the direct path. I'm up the road and a bit inland, but damned if the path doesn't run right up to Disney World before veering off to visit Sue Woo, after having a day or so to rest up after leaving Florida.

And this is how hurricanes get on everyone's last nerve. It's not fear of death and mayhem and destruction - it's just annoying as shit. It's so disruptive of everything about normal life - Girlchild has a job interview on Thursday, what are the odds that it will happen? At this point it's a roll of the dice. I don't know if I'll have a fun holiday weekend or spend Labor Day laboring in the yard cleaning up post-hurricane coleslaw. Will the sagging fence stay up or is this the last storm it can take? If it falls down I have to walk dogs until it's fixed, and that would suck bigtime. Do we go ahead and schedule meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, or just assume it's a lost cause and put business off until next week? Or maybe this storm will hook to the East and spare all of us/some of us. Or not. Who the hell knows?

If tomorrow evening's path looks like tonight's, I'll spend tomorrow evening putting away the fly-around-ables and chasing the cat hair in case the power goes out and I'm stuck here sweltering and coated in fur.

Otherwise, I'm as ready as it gets - water, lanterns, batteries, pet food, toilet paper, beverages adult and G-rated, etc. There was no panic at Publix this evening. People are playing the odds and buying frozen foods, it's business as usual. And at this point that is totally appropriate. It's Monday night and it's still too early to tell.