zkzz pound for pound

"What?
What? What is it?" I reply frantically.

"You
Are Tracking Orange Juice And

Milk All Over My Carpet!"

Is that a woman for you or what? Actually,
I've noticed that all of us, as one of our coping mechanisms,
tend to focus on minutia when something monstrous is
happening. Believe it or not, her remark made me feel deeply
ashamed and I was standing there with a stricken look on my
face when, she looked at me, we both looked at the totally
devastated apartment, realized we had both been literally
shaken insane... and... we collapsed into a fit of compulsive
laughter. (Which, I think, is another coping mechanism.)

I moved back to the Keys almost exactly two
years ago. I didn't even get unpacked before me and Mongo man
(who has become one of the best copywriters in America) had to
catch the last
Greyhound Bus out of the Keys to escape Hurricane Georges. I
remember when we finally found the last two motel rooms in the
town of Okeechobee, how some dumbass woman on the phone was
interrogating the motel manager wanting to know whether or not
the place had a pool!

Picture it: Cars and trucks are bumper to
bumper from Key West to Orlando, rain and wind are hitting
everyone with the viciousness of an artillery attack, you
can't buy, beg or steal a hotel room or any other place to
stay... and... in the middle of all this...

Some Idiot Bitch Wants

To Know If The Place

Has A Pool!

Last year it was Hurricane Irene. She dumped
so much rain on this part of Florida, she flooded me out of my
apartment and I've been almost a total transient ever since. I
rode that one out with my Aunt and Uncle in the upstairs part
of the house. By that time Jack's cancer had gotten hold of
his mental faculties and I remember him asking me, "Gary, I wonder why the electricity just went out?"

"Gee,
Uncle Jack, maybe it has something to do with the hurricane
going on outside."

"Well,
damnit, someone needs to do something about it. Wanda, you
call 'Rumor Control' right now!"

And so it goes. Now it's Debby. Only this
time, I've decided to write my newsletter before she
hits instead of after. I think it's just my way of dealing
with minutia instead of the monster. I know how to
write a newsletter. I don't know how to control acts of
God. My son Bond just called urging me to get out of here. But
you know what? ALL Keys' visitors have been ordered to leave
by Monroe County Emergency Management. So have all
high-profile vehicles. Highway 1 (the only road out) is
clogged with semi's, campers, RV's, buses, cars, etc. Just one
of those suckers has to run out of gas, blow a tire or
whatever and you'll have thousands of vehicles stranded about 1-1/2 inches above sea level
just stopped there like sitting ducks for sweet Debby to
eviscerate at her leisure. Besides the "strike zone"
probability area of this bitch is anywhere from Key West to
Palm Beach which means...