Not even two weeks after my state got hammered by Hurricane Helene, and here comes another one. It’s seriously giving me flashbacks of 2004.

For those of you who don’t remember, or know, Florida was hit by FOUR hurricanes. I was affected by three. I lived in (and still do) the peninsula. One of them hit the panhandle. I honestly can’t recall it’s name, Ivan? I’ll have to look it up.

We had Charley, then Frances, who my bestie and I renamed, That Bitch From Hell, because it lingered so long in the Atlantic off the Southeast Coast that we just wanted to get it over with. Then we got Jeanne, which turned to be not real bad in Daytona. By that time my new roommate and I decided we wanted to drink heavily and send out prank e-mails to stupid men who deserved them. She and I were going through our respective divorces and were in no mood for pain in the ass men, or hurricanes.

More on fun with 2004 later. It’s 3:23 am and tomorrow, scratch that, TODAY will be busy. I’m going to get sandbags because Hurricane Milton has a very good chance of making landfall in Tampa Bay (the place of my youth) and then spinning up the 200 miles to Orlando and buzzing over my neck of the woods. Oh yippie.

Our back storeroom sometimes floods during these beasties. In 2017, we had Irma, and water entered the storeroom and came about an inch from breaching the step up into the kitchen. We had lots of rain and wind. At one point the door between the storeroom and the kitchen was yanked open by a gust. The door was locked too.

Monday was going to be a day of doing errands I need to do to get back to work, make sure I have work clothes ready, my lunch bag ready for my coffee thermos.

Instead I’ll be getting air in my tires. Yeah, had to stop home Sunday night between trips to two stores and I heard that scary beep that indicated a warning light came on. Oh goodie. I looked at the amber triangle with the ! in the middle, and sighed relief: it was telling me my tire pressure was low. The joke was on me; I kept telling myself to check the air in my tires. I kept forgetting.

It was dark and drizzling pretty good, and I still needed to go to Publix. We needed bananas. That turned out to be a joke, too.

After the warning light came on I parked in front of our abode, unlocked and opened the door, “Hey, Rose (not her real name), you wanna drive to Publix, my tire pressure light came on.” She responded, “We can take my car, but I just took a Percocet, and shouldn’t drive. If you don’t mind driving. I’ll go with you.” She has a Honda CR-V. It drives very much like my Nissan Rogue. I’d driven it before, so I agreed.

At the store I got my band aides I‘d needed, and went to hit Banana World. I turned a corner to get into the produce department. There was the usual banana stand. It was completely empty. WTF? There was a produce dude putting out some apples, or something, “Hey, are you guys really out of bananas?” “Yeah, we ran out six hours ago.” He told me they get a produce truck everyday. So, I guess I’m going there after I get sandbags. Unless Rose wants to go while I get sandbags. That stop is really right next to the shopping center.

Well, to anyone in the Milton zone: good luck and stay safe. Don’t try to surf in the Gulf, like the bozos on the East coast try to do if one of those beastly storms is on the Atlantic side.

It’s late, I’m taking a shower and trying to sleep to 10-11. My sleep schedule is so eased up from my surgery.