The Post NOT About Gustav

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From all accounts, the City of New Orleans is aflutter with Hurricane Gustav.  And frankly, I have done my best to stick my head in the sand about it.  It is expected to hit land Sunday or Monday.  We have cancelled our plans (for the third time) to visit CS’s aunt in Houston.  Otherwise, we are on a wait-and-see plan.

Katrina was the first storm I ever evacuated for, and that was done the day before the storm when I called my uncle at 5 in the morning and he said, “You need to leave.”  I cried, panicked, packed and left.  And had no regret about leaving.

Now, with Katrina behind me, you’d think I’d be more willing to evacuate.  You’d be wrong.  The thing is, these storms take days to come in.  And the weathermen LOVE to get all hot and bothered about how it’s going to be terrible: They cry wolf.  A lot.  We’ve had many friends evacuate time and again to drive like a snail out of and back in to town with everyone else and pay lots of money to stay in blah hotels in blah cities.  Only for the storm to miss us.

Tonight, CS and I had a bit of an argument over plans.  He insists that if it’s over a Cat 3, we are evacuating.  Because of Sun.  I, on the other hand, insist on a slower approach that will keep us here unless it’s serious AND coming pretty straight at us.  Like Katrina.  And yes, I know Katrina was a Cat 3 when it hit New Orleans.  But it was a Cat 5 UNTIL then.  If it’s a Cat 3 in the Gulf, it isn’t gonna get WORSE once it hits land.  And Katrina, though maybe downgraded to a Cat 3, I assure you, had much more tornado activity than “regular” Cat 3′s.

But I digress.  My plan is to have a generator and a window unit.  We can stay cool and have access to a TV or laptop and keep the fridge plugged in.  No long drives; no hotels; no issues with the pets; no heartache about what to bring and what to leave behind.  And if it shapes up, say, the day before to be a serious storm that is barreling down on NOLA, we leave.

CS promised me a generator—in public—3 years ago.  And we both kinda let it go until a storm is brewing.  I called CS earlier today to ask him to finally live up to his promise; he assured me he’d make calls and take care of it.  When he came home, I knew he had done nothing.  And he hadn’t, claiming he was too busy.  To which I responded, “If it were the new i-Phone coming out today that YOU wanted, you wouldn’t have been to busy, I assure you.” (Yeah, I fight ugly).

After a few rounds, CS argued that we didn’t need a generator; that neither he nor I EVER evacuated when we were kids and we lived through no electricity.  Finally, he said, “You only want a generator because your grandfather and your uncle and sister have one.”  And as I sharpened my lawyer’s argumentative claws, I looked at him and, well, looked away.  He had me.  Dammit, he was dead right and I couldn’t lie.  So finally, I admitted it.  “Fine.  So what?  When I was young, we’d call my grandparents during a storm and they’d be living high on the hog.  TV.  Air conditioning.  It was like no storm was passing over them.  Can’t I have that for myself?  Can’t I “grow up” and have a damn generator?  Even if we never use it?”

And he said yes.  I can live high on the hog when storms come to town.  If we stay.  Which we are likely to do.  But nothing is set in stone.

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