irene

In college I had to write a paper about presidential leadership. Presidential as in Washington or Jefferson or Garfield or Arthur or Cleveland or Nixon or Reagan. The ones that currently occupy a big white house. THOSE presidents.

The professor assigned a commander in chief to everyone in the class. I got #35. He was otherwise known as John F. Kennedy.

My paper was terrific except for the small glaring omission of his assassination. I mean, what did his assassination have to do with leadership anyway? IMHO it felt as if everyone talked about #35's demise rather than his time in office, and this paper was all about leadership so it made sense to exclude that one tiny detail. Right?

WRONG-O! The professor laughed -- cackled actually -- and handed the paper back with instructions to rewrite it pronto. Apparently the assassination has EVERYTHING to do with Kennedy's leadership. Dang.

This is what was going through my mind this morning as I set out to give you, my peeps, a blog post about my latest craft project.

Huh? Kennedy to craft projects?

Bear with me just a smidge longer, mkay?

*Ahem!* Back to it....

So this morning I was going to give you the lowdown on how I spent hours in front of the TV last night making button flowers and omit the whole Hurricane Irene schmaltz. That's when I realized the omission of Irene's visit this weekend would be heinous and cause you, my peeps, to mimic my professor of old by guffawing and asking for a rewrite.

Irene has been all over the news. The only way you could have missed her is if you were in Antarctica this weekend. She has excited news producers like a blizzard and caused Matt and Ann to have Sunday morning duties. She is dancing with everyone along the east coast before retiring for the night, and having some serious economic impacts along the way. Everyone knows Irene.

The good news is we escaped Irene's wrath with just heavy winds and about 5" of rain last night. The house is dry, the power remained on, the cat was happy to have us home, and it was a relatively easy night.

This was our biggest excitement. We heard a "thud" early in the evening that turned out to be part of the neighbor's tree crashing down on our adjoining fence. Easy schmeasy (because it's their fence!!!). This morning the yard has lots of leaves and tree branches littering the grass, but nothing else. We are very lucky to have escaped the brunt of the storm. 

Conversely, this is what the inside of my house looks like. YIKES! I baked for a while after returning from my afternoon hair appointment (my southern roots were showing) so the kitchen looks about the same. Tsk tsk.  It was great to have a night at home where the creative juice-o-meter was reading "high" and we didn't have anything else that was begging to be done. Or at least not begging loud enough for me to hear it, *blush* so I was comfortable leaving the mess overnight. Hopefully I can get a few more done this morning. 

That's my Cape May mug in the foreground keeping watch over the button mess. :-) 

There you have it, peeps. Irene has left the building, leaving a crater in the fence and a mess in the house. It's been a good weekend! I hope you have escaped relatively unscathed as well.