I just opened the computer to write my post--and it is making a funny whirring noise that I have never heard before.  I hope that it doesn't bite the dust.

Pat and I are going to the Mississippi coast soon.  And over to Dolphin Island.  She is driving.  We are trying to intersect with Hurricane Michael, but I think it will be all over before we go.   My brother Bill and Janet to the island often and say it is peaceful and quiet.

I was in a hurricane in Pensacola once, and another in Beaufort South Carolina. The one in Beaufort, was interesting.  The Marines came and boarded up our windows with plywood and gave instructions on what to do and how to prepare for it.

The aviators, including Ken, had to save the planes.  So they flew to Memphis or somewhere far away from the danger and spent the week playing Acey-Ducy.  They came home when it was all over.  The three children and I fended the hurricane alone.

Ken was always gone when interesting things happened at home.  He once said that we made stories up to entertain him.  A hurricane is not entertaining.  It's interesting,  but not entertaining.  You need to have plenty of water, food, and everything else to sustain life.  You need to fill the bathtubs up to the top so that you have water to flush the toilets--unless everything is flooded.  You sure don't want to flush in a flood.  It's not pretty.

Everyone wants to know why we are going to the coast.  I have a friend there who is 92.  I haven't seen her since 1967.  I'm running out of friends and want to see the ones I have left.  That happens as you age.  There aren't that many friends left who haven't "bought the farm," as Ken and the Marine pilots put it.

It's been a long time since I have seen the coast.  We lived on the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Gulf.  The Marines wanted their pilots to operate off carriers on every world coast--American and foreign.  I want to wiggle my toes in the sand.  And I don't even like sand.  But the sand on the Gulf is the best.  White.  At least on the East side of New Orleans.  And every day, God washes the beach.