......

AT THE TAIL END OF LAST WEEK I was busy preparing for house guests.  I didn't have time for absorbing the news.  I knew that current events would just have to be what they were, without me knowing.  And the future would keep on arriving, full of surprises, whether or not I had a glimmer of what it would look like!

So Friday evening  I was scanning Facebook when I saw that Wife of Only Son had posted a comment:  "Working Sunday, during Sandy, kind of worried about leaving Justin and Art at home."  In my loosey-goosey way (I'm blushing, Reader Dear) I interpreted it to say "...Don't want to leave them alone with Sandy."

WHO the HECK, I wondered, is SANDY?! Why are my son and grandson spending time with her?

Saturday I was occupied with birthday activities and such.   References were made to a storm, but I paid little heed.  Then late in the day, someone let slip the name "Sandy" again. Ah, ha!  I heard details of the super-monster storm that was due.

Sunday morning--that's when I thought the storm was moving into my area--two a.m., to be exact.  I can no longer tell you, Dear Reader, where I got that detailed bit of info, but it wasn't correct!  Nope, I got up on Sunday morning and thought that Sandy must have fizzled.

By the time I read the Sunday paper headlines "Calm Before A Roaring Superstorm", I had already bid my house guests goodbye, attended church, gone to an Ethiopian restaurant for lunch with friends, and talked about Sandy extensively.  "What?! You haven't made any preparations?" My friends across the table, eating their yellow lentils and injera, asked me incredulously.  

"Nope," I said.  "And there aren't even any matches in the house," I replied.  "I used the last one a couple days ago."

Then I got nervous.

 
I left the restaurant and headed for the Kmart store to buy matches.  And while I was there, I looked for a flashlight.  "All we have left are on that little cart!" a saleswoman told me.  Glancing over the motley and limited assortment of penlights and little cigarette lighter-light combos, I saw nothing to be of great aid in a hurricane.  But then I came upon a man who had a  battery-powered headlamp in his cart.  "Where did you find that, may I ask?"  I asked (without waiting to find out if he would give me permission).  
"Oh, it was back there...in 'gifts' somewhere," he replied as he waved his hand toward the nether regions of the store.  
I spent a good five minutes searching, and ended up back at the penlight cart.  Amazingly, the man with the headlamp was still there, looking over the paltry offerings.  "Uh, I couldn't find any headlamps back there," I said to him.  "Do you know, was there another one?" 
"No,there wasn't," he said, and perhaps it was only my imagination, but he seemed to be asking himself why he'd withheld this bit of data previously.
He paused.  "But here, you can have this one," he offered.  "I think I'm going to get something else."  He handed me the headlamp and a pack of batteries.  "And here are the batteries, if you need them."
 
Reader Dear, I felt it was a very good omen!  I went home and filled the bathtub with water.  I saved the Sunday crossword puzzle to do by the light of my nifty headlamp.  I stayed abreast of the latest tales of Sandy, who seemed to be dragging her feet.

Then, when I was getting ready for bed, I noticed the water in the tub had drained away!
I felt it was a very bad omen!

...to be continued, Reader Dear, if Sandy gives her go-ahead.

.......