We have two things to celebrate this weekend: The 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine \u2014 hooray! \u2014 and the fact that we weren\u2019t struck by a hurricane, or a tropical storm, or any other force of nature. <\/p>\n
Because for a while last week it sure seemed like that might be in our future, didn\u2019t it? Tropical Storm Erika picked up steam in the Caribbean and got us all in a tizzy. <\/p>\n
Five-day cones started pointing straight at us. Batteries and bottles of water disappeared off of store shelves. People started rioting in the streets when they realized they might have to eat canned meat. A locust sighting caused panic and cries that it was the end of the world. (Lucky, for us they weren\u2019t locusts at all.) <\/p>\n
But even the tropical doubters \u2014 the ones who think there\u2019s a magical force field over the city that bounces storms to the Carolinas \u2014 had to think twice and steady their resolve.
\n<\/p>\n
I had to steady my resolve. \u201cI can\u2019t go back to canned meat,\u201d I declared one evening. \u201cIt\u2019s too high in sodium!\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I realized we\u2019ve gone too long without a real threat of tropical weather. That we\u2019ve become lax and skitterish and even un-prepared. The little puff in Hispaniola taught us a lot last week. <\/p>\n
As a neighbor said to me, \u201cWe\u2019ve better plan to do some hurricane planning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yep. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been so long since we\u2019ve had a real threat \u2014 even the slightest brush with doom.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve had it too easy for too long. We\u2019ve started taking for granted our run of good luck. That it\u2019s been quiet, and that we haven\u2019t had a run-in with a tropical <\/p>\n
I found myself awake in bed one night counting the number of windows throughout my house. As the count went higher, I cursed that we ever put an addition on the house and wondered how in the world I would ever board them all up. <\/p>\n
Or what about the animals? Not just a dog. We have two chickens. My hurricane evacuation plans now have to include taking Ruby and Louise in a hamster cage. A HAMSTER CAGE!!! <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about the fish?\u201d my daughter asked. <\/p>\n
My wife said something along the lines of, \u201cthe fish can swim,\u201d and left it at that. (I started looking through Tupperware containers.) <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been so nice for so long. So tropically peaceful. <\/p>\n
So happy birthday, St. Augustine. And here\u2019s to hoping we keeping dodging those storms and the magical force field keeps spinning them off elsewhere. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have two things to celebrate this weekend: The 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine \u2014 hooray! \u2014 and the fact that we weren\u2019t struck by a hurricane, or a tropical storm, or any other force of nature. Because for a while last week it sure seemed like that might be in our future, didn\u2019t it? Tropical Storm Erika picked up steam in the Caribbean and got us all in a tizzy. Five-day cones started pointing straight at us. Batteries and bottles of water disappeared off of store shelves. People started rioting in the streets when they realized they might have to eat canned meat. A locust sighting caused panic and cries that it was the end of the world. (Lucky, for us they weren\u2019t locusts at all.) But even the tropical doubters \u2014 the ones who think there\u2019s a magical force field over the city that bounces storms to the Carolinas \u2014 had to think twice and steady their resolve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,558],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-nutshells","category-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1357,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}