Feeling Fay

Or is that fey? After this weekend, I get the two confused.

I am waiting here to see what this storm will do, where she eventually decides to go, left, right, near, far, dead-ahead, engines full, damn the torpedoes, full stop. The models are making me dizzy. And does anyone else lie awake at 2 a.m. in mortal fear of being wiped out by the middle name of a notorious tele-evangelist's wife so desperately in need of an ironic queer eye intervention?

For all the blogs I've read, all the models I've studied, and all the analysis and discussion to which I've listened, I've found the experts seem to have missed the most telling predictive statistic of all: the perishable to comfort food ratio.

Before I explain, a full disclosure: This is a personal tracking model, not meant to guide anyone but FEMA and the criminally insane in whatever passes for their emergency storm preparations. This is one in a long line of models I've found to be mildly predictive only to be discarded for an unspecified draft choice at a later date, as I'm sure this one will become early Wednesday morning.

First I had the George W. Bush a.k.a. "Bring 'em on" model. In that one, the probability of landfall is inversely proportional to the individual desire of me and my friends to see what would happen if it did. I highly recommend this model to renters, the very young and anyone who has an evacuation room on retainer and speed-dial in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and is already on the way. Oh, and the more than adequately insured, if that endangered species hasn't been entirely snuffed out by the good hands of Allstate around their neck as our good neighbors at State Farm enthusiastically cheer them on. This model worked really well at keeping the storms at bay in Florida through the seventies and eighties, at least until they did the transgender surgery that transformed half the hurricanes into him-icanes and David left me without power for ten solid days. Though that did teach me the powerful lesson of doing laundry BEFORE landfall. Key safety tip, half a score of sultry days in un-air conditioned as the natives and settlers experienced it Florida really leaves one wanting for a fresh and clean change of underwear each morning.

Next came the Fools and Small Children a.k.a. "Where Angels Fear to Tread" model. Ok, I never tested this one on hurricanes specifically. But initial results seemed quite promising as I listened at the back door a few months after we'd bought our first home as a freight train rolled one hundred yards behind the house around tree-top level before slamming down into the power substation half a mile away and sending pretty green and pink fireballs reflecting off the low and looming clouds, one of seven tornadoes that spun through the county that day. But once I saw the custom modifications to the house I'd just moved out of with its cinderblock wall bowed out as though following a French curve, and its garage to sliding glass door through the living room now a breezeway with its porch still intact and screened, I set this one aside with a full field testing. Scares me and I'm fearless.

Now I've settled on a new predictive tool, the perishable to comfort food ratio, a corollary of the preparation to paralysis principle. It works like this. You see a storm develop in the basin, so after a few days of constant panic on every station you watch you start tuning in to see where the weather experts think it might go. Or, if you're really lucky, an expert you know nails an e-mail to your electronic door every few hours when you've just convinced yourself after the last one that if you ignore it, perhaps Ms. Martin Luther and her hurricane reformation will eventually go away. It worked for a few generations of popes, didn't it? As you watch the black center line dance just left and right of your current coordinates in a personal cone of uncertainly over the one weekend you'd hoped to kick back and relax before the other four bowling balls you have in the air simultaneously come crashing down on your head, you think, hmm maybe I should do something to prepare. The problem is, you know the more you do, the less likely the storm is to actually affect your location.

This is a model rich in irony. Flood insurance due to kick in next Friday? Oow, three points toward landfall. Hurricane windows ordered but not installed? That's a five point deduction, mister. Have all your wood and shutters pre-cut though buried under the pile of donations to Friends of Strays in your garage, that's one point in your favor. Full tank of gas that you didn't have to wait four hours in line as they raised the prices ten times at twenty-five cents a pop while the state price-gouging inspector topped off his personal fleet of SUVs at a discount? Another point. Larder stocked with military-grade surplus rations designed to survive the nuclear winter? One more against landfall. Have enough camping equipment and shotgun ammo stockpiled in the back closet to turn an Army Ranger green with envy and send Dick Cheney's logistics officer to note your precise location for a midnight raid to restock the Vice President's secret bunker? Sure, take another point. A whole house generator that you had to fight off a pack of eight other rabid homeowners from a co-op and their children Florentine-style with only a bonsai potting spade and a cast-iron garden rake during a hurricane-preparation tax holiday weekend? That's two more to your running total. Finally, spending two hours pulling all the brick-a-brack, whirligigs and potted plants from your porch and yard then digging out your pre-cut shutters from the detritus you've buried them beneath since 2004 instead of watching Olympic sports you didn't know had been invented but are suddenly consumed with a burning desire to see the medal ceremony for just so that you can hear what the National Anthem of Balukhastan actually sounds like nets the same three points you will lose by sitting on the couch until midnight to see if the Tamil True Hollywood Story athlete gains the first ever synchronized shuffleboard bronze for his country in Olympic history despite being afflicted with dengue fever and the overwhelming case of steroid-induced munchies that caused the diplomatic incident with the prime minister elect of India during the opening ceremony that has now led to the inexplicable civil war in nearby Myanmar.

And you can blow that hedge simply by going to the grocery store for a few last minute food stocks, and loading up instead on five pounds of fresh Alaskan sockeye salmon on sale for a tragically deep discount while thinking, what are the odds that we lose power for more than two days like we did after every storm in the 2004 season, even the ones in the Pacific? That type of catastrophic maneuver is only fractionally compensated for by the two jumbo cans of Hormel chunk chicken-flavored meat-like product and the last box of stale Triscuits whose seal is broken that you purchased anyway, you know, just in case.

But the real test comes when you get home with your largess and weigh out the total amount of perishables in your freezer, with double points for steak and any fish for which you paid over $10 a pound, against all the cookies, cupcakes and chocolate you splurged on and started sampling on the drive home to comfort you through the coming multi-day power outage that inevitably comes with any rain more severe than an afternoon thunderstorm, and, you know, to keep your energy up for the ensuing couch potato marathon as you wait. You may add to that the half-gallon of ice cream you just have to eat before the Florida Flash and Flicker melts it to the consistency of coffee creamer perfectly convenient for your cold morning cup of instant Joe from your overflowing supply closet. Bet you didn't know that Starbucks made an organic, free-trade, free-range, freeze-dried blend specifically for the Pentagon, did you?

I'm sad to say that alcohol consumption actually weighs in on the non-hurricane provision side of the equation. The more you drink pre-storm, the more likely it is you will need to stay frosty as the roof peels back from your only retirement investment and your neighbor's garden gnome slams through your front picture window to raid your dwindling supply of D-cell batteries. Though, oddly, the more you've consumed, the more likely you are to survive the Wizard-of-Oz-esque, we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-but-I-sure-wish-I-was-wearing-ruby-slippers-anyway tornadic event only to be rescued by the Coast Guard three miles out in the Gulf drifting on your neighbor's stained and sagging mattress in your wife's anniversary-only, special black lace underwear with the local Geraldo clone from Fox News covering the event live from Chopper 5 for Bill O'Reilly the full national feed. But that's a whole other formula.

And there lies both the beauty and bliss of this particular model. The more you do, the less likely you are to need it. But count on that, and, Wha-Bam, the next thing you will remember is waking up with Katie Couric interviewing your neighbor's garden gnome who has miraculously carved someone else's insurance claim number into your suddenly overgrown and weed-infested lawn with pruning shears in a crop circle reminiscent of "Signs" while you sleep under a lean-to constructed from the last intact piece of your roof sheathing within one thousand yards until the postal carrier wakes you to sign for the return-receipt final-notice bill from FEMA enforceable by Homeland Security for the truck-load of ice, gasoline and generators they dropped off to your neighbor three doors down who proceeded to black market it at prices that would shame a rogue Halliburton buying agent in the Green Zone under your name.

Yeah, that will probably be me you see in my fifteen minutes of fame next weekend.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III