Storm warning

Starting Tuesday, a whole lot of work starts raining down on me, and the deluge doesn't stop until mid-December—at the earliest. I've gone through work hurricanes before, but this one has the potential to be a Category 5, so to speak, and I'm really feeling pressed to start boarding up windows and stockpiling nonperishables. So to speak.

But how do you prepare for something like this? Clean the bathrooms? Freeze a bunch of meals? Give the kids plenty of extra hugs and kisses? Probably none of those things would hurt. But I decided my top priority was to finally turn my second monitor into a standing work station and to finish the office redecoration I started a million years ago. After all, if I'm going to be living here for the next three to four months, I want it to be pleasant.

My dad had agreed to build me a platform for the extra monitor but had not gotten around to it yet. So I seized on a moment of weakness—he was grateful because we rescued him from car trouble twice in one day—and basically handed him all the pieces and stood there with him in his garage until he made it for me. I can't run a welder or a grinder or a metal cutter, but I'm great at bringing ice water and making conversation and moving stuff around, so I did what I could to help.

Once that was done (and done to perfection, naturally) I got some photos edited and printed and then filled a bunch of empty frames that had been stacked up in a corner. (M.H. was kind enough to hang them all for me, but only because he didn't trust me with a hammer, which is silly and yet sadly understandable.)

And now! It's so beautiful and pleasant in here that I am feeling strangely calm and capable in the face of the sequence of events that we can refer to as Typhoon Dopey, Hurricane Happy, and Tropical Storm Grumpy.