The highest concentration of my family is in Texas. I never really thought about it before, but yep, I have more family in Texas than anyplace else, which is so weird to actually think about, since I always think my family is from Maine, but no, that’s just my immediate family, and even then, my parents aren’t ‘FROM’ here, and my sister has been in Colorado for almost ten years, now.  I do have a cousin and his two kids in Maine, and my aunt summers here, but that’s it. Weird.

Anyway, my aunt and uncle livein Houston, and my grandparents, and two cousins live in the Austin area, and another cousin on my mom’s side lives with her family in Dallas.  My Houston family is in Mobile, Alabama right now, as my uncle is a catastrophic insurance adjuster, meaning he only works when there is a natural disaster.  Their church has struggled with this, because when he’s not working, that means that people aren’t losing their homes, places of business, and well, lives.  "We just aren’t sure how to pray for you," is what he hears when there’s a dry spell. 

Right now, of course, there isn’t a dry spell at all, and he’s working a lot, and will be for quite some time — and so they are three states away as Rita barrels toward the Texas coast.  My aunt is an absolute control freak (oh, this is the one who smokes but Grandma can’t know! for old readers), when they visited us in 83, my mom made fun of how she’d indexed all of her possessions down to — I’m not kidding — her spices, and had an elaborate system in place for securing the house, involving numbered sheets of plywood, galvanized nails and hammers left in strategic places for her neighbors to board up the place if a storm approached.  Of course, that visit was cut short by Alicia tearing through Houston, and my aunt had fun serving crow back to everyone. (Well, everyone but my grandma, who at the time lived in Houston and was responsible for my aunt’s important documents, and grandma evacuated and left them on the floor. My aunt’s heart just about exploded, I’m sure. They dried, eventually.)

In Maine we had Hurricane Gloria in 85, and Andy and I geeked out and recorded data hourly based on our parents’ matching eagle-topped ‘weather stations,’ and reported in to each other until the phones went out, and when we presented our 24 hour collection of data, compiled at two different locations! Our teacher refused us extra credit.  In retrospect, we were at the top of the class anyway, but don’t tell the smart kids they can’t get extra credit. I know I’m still pissed off about it.

The storms we get here are mostly of the snow-variety, we had a legendary ice storm back in 98, but I didn’t suffer at all because I lived 4 buildings away from the county jail, which had generators that spit back the surplus enegery into the grid.  My little (bad) neighborhood never lost power, so I had others over to shower and watch news coverage.  Growing up we lost power all the time, and just dealt with it. We had a gas stove, and a fireplace, and a wood/oil combo furnace.  We had oil lamps and candles and scrabble games, and it was more of an adventure to lose power than anything.

Monsoon in Arizona was my favorite time of year, because the weather was just so powerful.  I would drive back up to PV from Camelback, and be totally amazed at the amount of water that was NOT being sucked into the ground.  I remember wading through calf deep water to my car in the parking garage of the Biltmore plaza, and being totally impressed.  Andy and I would smoke on the balcony and then go drive around in it, because it was just so impressive.  Sandstorms, too, while we missed the brunt of it in the north part of the city, you could SEE it happening in the distance, and it was totally bizarre. I love weather.

So, for all of you battening down the hatches for Rita, I hope that you and your loved ones and fellow citizens are able to stay safe in the next few days.  I’ll be thinking of you.