Poor me? Nope.

This is our living room area at the moment, and has been for some weeks now and evidently will be foreseeably, not only because HV residents must keep porches empty until cleared-for-use by the contractor, and so all the porch furniture and plants (and not unlikely animals) are here in the living room with me, and Linda has mothballs in the potted plants to keep the squirrels away, so it smells like an old folks home in here, but WTH, it IS an old folks home; but also because all furniture, lamps &c are moved away from the windows while we wait for the contractor's people to come check and measure for the new windows that the HOA is installing post Hurricane Michael, so the shutters are open.

Poor us, eh? I'm sitting here squnched up in my Bay side chair, but there's no Bay out there, it's all and only white. 

Fog Season, I love fog season, it's what we have instead of winter here on StAndrews Bay, so I anticipate it and enjoy it. Can't ski on it or pull a child on a sled over it, but it's ours. This morning's fog is so dense that in the predawn blackness I coultn't even see the flashing red light of the navigation buoy that's just a stone's throw off 7H porch. 

But as to the inconvenience, poor us, eh? This morning early I was checking the movie schedule and deciding No. Nothing wrong or bad about the offerings, just not interested in a gardenia theater where we can't just decide on the gardenia spur of the moment "Let's go to the movie", no, anymore you've got to alphabet go on gardenia line, find your gardenia seats on their alphabet seating chart and buy your gardenia tickets and go inside to your reserved seat, lie down and stretch out like you're ready for your gardenia massage or something, and you should pardon my French. I'm a cold day in Hell person before I yield to their gardenia nonsense, if I can't just walk up to the ticket booth, say "Two, please" and go inside to find a couple of seats, to Hell with it. The only movie theater anymore is The Grand at Pier Park, PCB, which now think they're truly grande and may condescend to sell you two of their reserved seats, but you better hurry. Both our movie theaters here in town were  destroyed by the hurricane. 

It's a stretch to my real point, but what really occurred to me before the above rant, as I contemplated my poor me inconvenience here in 7H, was the thought of 11 Oct 2018, Thursday morning after the storm, when folks whose job day before yesterday was at the theater, who sold you a ticket, and folks who took your ticket inside and told you which theater door to go in, and folks who would sell you popcorn whether it was stale or not, and folks who cleaned up in each theater after the film, made their way to "work" only to find their employers' premises destroyed, so had no job, and were living paycheck to paycheck (BTDT) and how am I going to pay my rent or buy groceries or make my car payment or even pay my past due credit card amount so I can buy a tank of gas and get the Hell out of town? Those folks. Those folks now are either gone, which so reduced our county population and our public school count that schools had to be consolidated and others closed down, or are still living in the clusters of FEMA trailers all over the county. So "poor me?" I don't think so. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, but knock, knock, knock, bam, bam, bam, hello? are you there? This is what brings people down in despair. But not people like me whose only real problem is that Captain's Table is still closed and they're the only place in StAndrews that served fried mullet.

Nomesane? 

The fog: I love our fog season on the Bay, which, away on hurrication exile, we missed last year. Love it like I used to love the later season of waking up hot summer mornings and watching the lightning strikes beyond Shell Island as summer thunder storms developed offshore and moved in: it only took one lightning strike to rob me of that joy and bring that 2018 horror back to mind every time it clouds up to rain. Nevertheless. Life is Good and Every Day is a Beautiful Day and it's great to be alive. Thank you, Lord, I love you anyway.

TW