Evacufuckingation or The Bitch Is Back

There's always an omen somewhere, and this is where I choose to find it. On Monday, getting tired of our twin activities of watching the progress of Hurricane Ophelia on the Weather Channel and sitting on the porch trying to take in every tiny bit of sunshine that would poke through the swirling clouds for five minutes every hour, my sisters and Mom took my four (almost five)-year old nephew to a nearby shopping center which has a large and deep canal filled with dark water where you can buy turtle food and feed the turtles that live in the canal. It all sounds really cute except for the fact that the turtles are freaking huge and there's never anyone in this shopping center and it all feels vaguely creepy, but my nephew enjoys it and it's a way to keep him occupied for a little while.

They buy food, and start to throw it down to the turtles, but notice that, along with several turtles, the food (looks like kibble) has also attracted some seagulls. They didn't come all this way to feed seagulls, so they start throwing it close to a wall, hoping that it would be harder for the seagulls to get to. My little sister and Mom notice that one large seagull has perched itself on a ledge by the wall, and as it sits there looking for free grub, one of the bigger turtles suddenly surfaces, grabs the seagull by the leg and pulls it under the dark water. My sister and mom exchange a look of horror and they leave quickly and quietly, with their unrequested lesson of the cruelty of nature giving them a serious case of the creeps.

The weather on Tuesday morning was actually pretty decent. The sun was out and we went as swimming as the rough surf would allow (translation: not even up to the waist, but at least I can say that my balls got wet once) and then figured that, just in case we were evacuated, we'd make sure that we hit our favorite restaurant (one of our favorites anywhere). We ate ourselves near-sick (but it was worth it), and we got back into the car only to see that we had gotten a message from the realty company that there was a mandatory evactuation. Bad moods distributed all around.

Now, TV shows love to make fun of little kids saying, "Are we there yet?" every five seconds in the car, but have you actually experienced it lately? Welcome to a whole new level of annoyed. Add in the fact that there was an extra dark cloud over our heads about the evacuation as we took the half-hour car ride back from Beaufort, and I can say confidently that I wasn't the only one in the car that was about to snap and yell, "If you say that one more time, we're feeding you to the turtles!"

So we get back to the house to start packing up, only to find that someone has already been by to take the furniture off the porch. Fine, only they also came into our house with the sole purpose of cleaning out the fridge. This was annoying enough, seeing as how we'd just spent a bunch of money for food for the week that we figured we could take home, but when we looked in the trash downstairs, everything from the fridge was in the trash...except for the beer and wine.

Now, throwing out our jams is one thing (we take our jams seriously in this family), but discovering that our food was thrown out could have at least been justified by figuring that whoever was there was just under orders to throw out whatever's perishable in case the power went out. But the fact that the beer and wine was mysteriously missing from the fridge purge means that someone just used the cleanout of the fridge to stock up for their "Bring It On, Ophelia" storm party.

We had just been heavily disappointed, but after that, we were pissed. Our tropical depression was upgraded to a full-on storm of anger.

I calmed a little bit after the little sister and I got in the car to head back to Winston-Salem, and we threw ourselves a little pity party there in the car, sought out the silver linings (#1: We're still not at work), and laughed at the songs that came up on random on her iPod. We'd prefer to be at the beach, obviously, but we'll still have unbelievably huge breakfasts and read Harry Potter.

...and speaking of my sister and car trips, anyone who took a chance and put their money on Wendy's in the Regrettable Meal Pool '05 is hauling it in. I put off lunch for too long, and I was getting a little light-headed, so I stopped at a McDonalds. But I couldn't do it. The other customers in the place made it look unappetizing, the menu made it look unappetizing, and the cashiers made it all even worse. So I went to Wendys. And felt exactly the way I always do about it. But mission accomplished: I won't want to eat at a fast-food place for about another year.