As you all know, thanks to the amazingly overblown non-stop SuperStormActionTeam coverage, Hurricane Sandy blew through the Eastern seaboard and gave us all a couple of days off. Which is all well and good. I mean, I’m not one to turn down a few days off from work, but it did promote a sort of forced closeness with your loved ones.
(By the way, am I the only one who kept thinking about Pecan Sandies every time this hurricane was mentioned? I love those things. I don’t know how I resisted the urge to buy some. Oh, wait….I didn’t do the hurricane prep.)
A little advance warning would have been nice. Of course, I knew a hurricane was coming, but I’d like to know ahead of time that the government, and by extension my office, would be closed. Then we could maybe plan a vacation, a sort of long weekend somewhere much warmer and less rainy.
As it was, my FEMA-partner-for-life XFE and I were up each other’s behinds for four days. I gave him Friday night off to go see my favorite band of all time, the Old 97s. I’ve basically known those guys since they played weekly gigs at the Barley House in Dallas. Rhett looked like this back then.
He’s aged nicely.
XFE, meanwhile, did the adult-responsible-couple thing and actually went out and stocked up on provisions to get us through the weekend, including the makings for “Sandy” crab pot pies and bacon, avocado and tomato sandwiches on sourdough bread. Yeah, we eat rull, rull good around here.
My contribution to our weather preparations was the stash of ridiculously overpriced candles that I hoard in cabinets throughout the house. It’s……a problem. I really can’t help it. And I light them all the time….summer, winter, it really doesn’t matter. To the point that the house is a haze of smoke, but I don’t care. I love me some candles.
The forced couples time also allowed us to do some Spain planning, which is going along swimmingly. We’ve locked down a route, an itinerary, a couple of wineries, and a few restaurant reservations.
When couples time and trip planning got old, I went upstairs, dragged out all my stored winter wear, and put away my summer gear. This project was a mixed success – I got to spend the entire afternoon buried in my closet, organizing and reorganizing my clothes, which is one of my favorite activities ever. Should I organize by sweater type or color? Let’s try both! However, I also had to try on a bunch of last year’s clothes and that was a bummer. Of my five winter skirts, four had to go; and of my six winter pants, three are barely allowed to stick around. They’re actually on probation.
Weak from sucking in my breath and trying on clothes, I somehow allowed XFE to drag me to my first BodyPump class at the gym this long weekend. Normally, there’s no way I can get home in time to make it to that class in the early evenings. XFE has a bit more flexibility, so he goes a couple of times a week. Since we were home on Tuesday, we went to the 12:15 class. I literally used the lowest weights available, so I thought it was an ok class. It was challenging, but I wasn’t dying afterwards or anything. I guess a whopping 5 pounds of weights isn’t really going to knock anyone out.
Honestly, the whole time I was thinking about how as soon as we were done, I could go back to drinking wine on the couch and watching the marathon of “Million Dollar Decorators” with total immunity, smug in my fitness. Plus, I was so busy looking at all the see-through yoga pants in the class. With every squat, I was treated to a peep show suitable for adult-access cable. And there were a lot of squats. And the class was packed with these wanna-be exhibitionists. Just tortured lycra and ass crack everywhere I looked. Very disturbing.
So that’s how we rode out the storm. Looking at booties, drinking lots of wine and champagne, making fun of the poor weather people trying to be professional while getting their legs swept out from under them by incoming waves. Pretty good times.
Oh, and we had no storm damage. No leaking windows or doors, no wind strewn lawn chairs or trash cans, no power outages.