Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Recently, we received a note on our blog’s contact form from Brooke Smith. She’s 34 years old, has two children and lives in Meridian, Mississippi. Her experience is an example of what author and psychiatrist Bernard Beitman calls simulpathity – feeling another’s distress at a distance.

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Hi my name is Brooke Smith and I am 34 years old. I recently came across an article on planetary empaths that I found to be interesting. I have had a similar experience and wanted to share with you and get your opinion on what happened to me.

I will begin by saying I have always been intuitive and often have random thoughts or flashes of events that later happen. In April, 2012, my mother was brutally murdered, along with two others. I was very close to my mother until a few months before her death. She was involved with a man who I believe was evil. He murdered her and his own parents.

My mother was killed after midnight on April 6, 2012, making it April 7 in actuality. She was a nurse and had injured her back working. She also started having kidney stones and various other health problems and I believe he was making her physically sick.

On April 6, I got home from work and was bent over looking at the newspaper when I got a catch or something in my back. I began having pain like I’ve never before felt. I’m perfectly healthy and have never had back problems. I was able to get to my bed and could do nothing except roll in bed, writhing in pain. I literally thought I was going to die. This went on until about 3:00 a.m. and then stopped as suddenly as it started. I’ve never had another issue with my back. It was odd to me and I wonder if somehow I was able to feel the pain my mother was in at that time. Investigators believe it was about 3:00 a.m. when she died. We didn’t find out she was dead until the evening of the 7th, about 8:30 p.m.

The man who murdered my mother was named Anthony Garrett. The evening of April 7, 2012, he climbed a 300-foot cell tower and fell or jumped. Before he fell or jumped, he had been screaming at a crowd of onlookers that he had killed his family. But I’m not sure he acted alone in the murders and have several reasons.

I worked for an attorney’s office from 2008 to 2013 as a legal secretary. Since my mother was killed, I can’t focus or stay on task. There are a million thoughts, ideas , and flashes going thru my head all the time. I sense how others feel….I guess that’s what it is. I’m always anxious, nervous, and edgy. I haven’t been holding it together very well. I’m separated from my husband now. We were together since 1999 and got married in 2011.

Please help. I can’t get past my mother’s death and have so many unanswered questions.

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I was struck by the similarities between Brooke’s experience and that of  Bernard, who began choking at the same moment that his father choked to death on the other side of the country. I sent Bernard Brooke’s story and he replied, Yes, sounds like simulpathity for sure!

I asked Brooke if she had felt her mother’s presence at any time since her murder. She replied:

You asked if I felt my mother’s presence……I do not. I look for signs in everything…..this has nearly pushed me past the breaking point, yet I feel as if my purpose is to dig deeper and gain every bit of knowledge and insight that comes my way. Feel free to share my story if you’d like. Also, before my mother was killed I always had the most vivid dreams. I could recall them also. Since her death I’ve had no dreams that I can recall. I’m not sure I can dream anymore.


Thanks for reading this and trying to help.

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Does anyone have any insights that might help Brooke?

September 8 is the official publication date for Unlocking the Secrets to Scorpio.

Fiction and non-fiction books evolve in different ways.

With a novel, the idea for me often begins with a what if… The what if may be something I’ve mulled over for days, weeks, months, sometimes years. Or it may be triggered by something I recently read, a conversation with someone, a random thought.

Non-fiction books sometimes involve what ifs but often come about because of an intellectual curiosity or a question that begs to be answered, like those questions you probably asked your parents when you were a kid. Mom, why is the sky blue?

Dad, if the earth is round, how come all the oceans don‘t spill out of it? You need to know, so you start digging around for answers and pretty soon, you realize you’ve got a book idea.

Then there are non-fiction books that are generated “in house,” when an editor or publisher  has an idea and queries agents about writers who can run with it. Usually, at least for me, there’s a synchronicity involved in this kind of book. That’s how it was for Unlocking the Secrets to Scorpio.

Last year, my agent – Al – emailed me that a publisher was interested in finding an astrologer to write a book about Scorpios and would this interest me? The query itself struck me as somewhat odd. I’ve written a number of astrology books, but in 30 years have never received this sort of query: write about one sign. Most publishers want something broader – like stuff about all twelve signs. I suspected two things immediately: that the publisher was a Scorpio and because I have that sign rising in my chart, I should come up with an outline that would illustrate how I would write such a book.

Also, my interests for most of my life have been Scorpionic – reincarnation, life after death, communication with the dead, synchronicity, the paranormal, astrology, ghosts. In addition, the 8^th house in astrology is ruled by Scorpio, and I have a jammed 8^th house. So I came up with a table of contents and sent it to Al and pretty soon, the publisher – Will- and I were emailing back and forth about this proposal.

In these email exchanges, I discovered that Will is a Scorpio married to a Scorpio, has two Scorpio sons, and a Scorpio sister-in-law. Wow. Trust me. This is a lot of raw emotional and psychic energy in a single family. I thought, Okay, he wants answers. Then I discovered something else, a statistic.

According to this site, as of 2012, the mot common zodiac sign is Scorpio. These folks make up nearly ten percent of the population. Virgo follows with a close second at 9.4% of the population, then:

Gemini – 9.3%

Pisces – 9.1%

Libra – 8.8%

Cancer – 8.5%

Taurus — 8.3%

Capricorn – 8.2%

Aries – 8.1%

Sagittarius – 7.3%

Leo – 7.1%

Aquarius – 6.3%

So yes, Will was curious – who wouldn’t be with that kind of raw energy swirling around you 24/7?- but it’s also a brilliant marketing tactic. Take the most common sign – which happens to be the most complex and profound – and publish a book about it. Who are these Scorpios? How are they doing what they’re supposedly so good at – transforming the world?

Take a look at this really small sampling of famous Scorpios:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe – Carl Sagan, November 9

To whom much is given, much is expected. I do believe this. It’s embedded in me – Tim Cook , November 1

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. -Napoleon Hill, October 26

Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right. Hillary Clinton, October 26

Believe you can and you’re halfway there– Theodore Roosevelt, October 27

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction – Pablo Picasso, October 25

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be – Kurt Vonnegut, November 11

So, I wrote the book from a relationship perspective. Dating a Scorpio. Married to a Scorpio. A kid whose mom or dad is a Scorpio, a parent with a Scorpio kid, a Scorpio sibling.   You get the idea. Each of these relationships is taken through the twelve signs, and has specific information about how to deal with the Scorpio in your life.

A week before the book was published, I went to Amazon to get the links and discovered the book already had a review. I was somewhat confused by this until I discovered that Amazon has a program called Vine, where their top reviewers take a look at free products – i.e., advance copies of books – and review them. And I admit I got a kick out this person’s review:

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product

I have never in the past given astrology a second thought or cared much about it, beyond thinking it was the work of Satan as a youngster thanks to my mother’s brainwashing “not for profit” church. I saw this book, and thought it would be interesting, as I am a Scorpio. It helped me to give astrology a second thought and, indeed, I believe there is something to it

That first sentence – about the reviewer thinking as a kid that astrology is the work of Satan…It so fits a Scorpio. Many Scorpios seem to deal with bottom line issues that that involve enormous contrasts and leave little room for nuance. Good/evil. God/Satan. Love/hate.

I also got a kick about this line: The writing is fine, but it is her second job, so it is not sublime.

Writing is what I do full-time, so I’m not sure what the reviewer meant by this. Maybe she was referring to the fact that I also write fiction. Who knows? At any rate, here’s an excerpt – the introduction – about astrology and synchronicity.

Amazon, print book-  $10.14

Amazon, ebook- $9.99

Angel Falls is the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfall, located in Canaima National Park in the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela. Years ago, Trish and I spent several days in the vast park and flew close to the falls in a small plane. Trish grew up in Venezuela so it was a homecoming trip for her.

On that journey, we learned about the synchronicity of Angel Falls. When you see the video that’s linked here, you will glimpse the mysterious majesty of the fall and you might even think you see an angel in the mist.

However, surprisingly the falls obtained its name from an American aviator, Jimmie Angel, who discovered the great falls in the early 1930s. However, no one believed his story because maps of the region didn’t show any such enormous geological feature. Finally, on March 24, 1935 his story was verified when he flew his Flamingo plane over the falls with representatives of an American mining company. Realizing the falls had no known name, they dubbed it Angel Falls.

One of the miners, L.R. Dennison, wrote about his adventures with Jimmie Angel in a book called, Devil Mountain.  The mountain is now called Auyan-tepui. No doubt if Jimmie’s last name was Smith, the name of the falls would not have lasted to this day. But Angel Falls is perfect.

Jimmie Angel and Angel Falls became better known after Oct. 9, 1937 when Angel crash landed his Flamingo atop the tepui. He and the other crash survivors hiked for days until they reached a village. You can read more about Jimmie Angel’s adventures here.

Here’s an incredible video of Angel Falls:

As an addendum, it should be noted that no doubt the native population in the region had known about the falls for centuries and had a name for it. In that sense, this story is a latter day version of the idea of Columbus discovering America as if no one already lived there.

Some weeks back, we posted an interesting owl synchro that Kerrie had experienced. One of the comments was from Gail Provost Stockwell,  a friend we have known for years. She and her deceased husband, Gary, started the successful Write It, Sell It workshops. Here was Gail’s comment:

Here’s a synchro for you! While I was running errands earlier this afternoon, I had my radio tuned into my favorite station: Sirius XM 123–PRX, Radio Remix. All stories, all the time. True stories. Although I missed the start of the story I quickly “got” that it was about one lawyer who, despite immense ridicule, theorized that the bloodied woman found dead inside her home at the foot of the staircase was not murdered that night as everyone else believed — (by her husband, I’m guessing only because I missed hearing the story’s ending) . Anyway, he put forth the cause of her death as follows: she had gone outside for some reason such as to take out the garbage, and on her way back to the house, she suddenly was attacked by an owl. Somehow she made it inside, but the blood was gushing, and the pain struck her down.

What this lawyer noticed that no one else had picked up was that among the forensic details he saw this was an owl feather —microscopic, in her hair. Turns out he was right. Owls who attack humans strike with sharp talons that might just as well be made of steel, I suppose. They are known, these particular owls, for spiking into the lower right hand corner of the back of a human head. And so it goes.

But, OWL STORIES? Two of them? Only hours apart? I ‘m not an owl gal. What’s the message . . .I wonder. Better go look this up in my book, ANIMAL SPEAKS. Cheers!

I wrote Gail on Facebook and warned her that a third owl synchro would probably occur soon. Sure enough, she wrote me today that the third owl had shown up through an image a Facebook friend of hers had posted:

…Don’t know if this is for real, or photo shopped, according to others who also responded to the photo. Perhaps, there we go. Perhaps that’s the message. In which reality does this darling creature exists? Which reality calls to me? To you? The power of choice. Power of thought, emotion, intuition.

I said that it didn’t matter if it was photo shopped. The point is that it was her third owl synchro in a matter of days.

 Among indigenous people, owls are believed to be messengers between the living and the dead, and symbolize hidden knowledge, wisdom, the occult. They have also been associated with alien abductions. We’ve done a number of posts about owls (put the word in our search box) and in looking back over them, I ran across this story. It was about the one-legged burrowing owl (that beautiful owl in the photo at the top of the post) that warned us about the impending death of my mother, the most powerful personal synchro I’ve ever experienced.

It was posted on August 13, 2010, but in the actual post, the date I was writing it is noted. I was stunned. I wrote that post (August 7, 2010) exactly five years ago today (August 7, 2015). This is the kind of stuff that happens with owl synchros.

Psychology Today has a history of publishing dismissive or highly skeptical articles about synchronicity and all aspects of the paranormal. That may seem surprising to anyone who might confuse mainstream psychology with parapsychology, an under-funded stepchild of the science of the mind. The mainstream, popularized in PT,  has embraced the mechanistic/materialistic view of the universe for decades after once being considered a questionable science. Indeed, in its early years, psychology was rooted in mysticism. So the emphasis has been to quantify the subjective and reject any implications of a spirit world or any realm beyond the everyday world.

So I found it interesting when PT recently decided to start a regular column on their website about synchronicity and, importantly, presenting it in a positive light. The columnist is Dr. Bernard Beitman, visiting professor at the University of Virginia where he has developed a program called Coincidence Studies. Here’s his first column.

Today while I was driving over to Barnes & Noble, I set an intention: that the bookstore angel (sibling of the library angel) would point out an insightful book about manifestation.

After cruising through the new fiction section, I made my way to the back of the store where the nonfiction that interests me is shelved. New Age, astrology and divination books, philosophy, and a relatively new category at B&N called Living the Best Life You Can Live. One of the three books that caught my attention is called The One Command: Six Steps to Attract Wealth with the Power of Your Mind by Asara Lovejoy.

The concept isn’t new. Since Napoleon Hill wrote about it in Think and Grow Rich, countless others have taken a stab at the same idea. I was curious what the author had to say that might be different from what I’d read before, so I read the back cover, looked at the table of contents, read the introduction, then opened the book at random to a section called Success Story. There are a number of success story sections in the book and I’m not sure which one I turned to, but it may have been the one below, which involved a synchro.

A teenage girl and her mother were shopping at the mall and the daughter told her mom she wanted a job so she could buy herself some clothes. The mother had been using the One Command process and told her daughter she’d been using the technique to manifest some things for herself and that she could show it to her.

The daughter said, “Okay,” and her mom walked her through the Six Steps. She Commanded, I don’t know how I have a job, I only know that I do now, and I am fulfilled.

While mom and daughter still talking about the daughter getting a job, they walked into the daughter’s favorite clothing store. The owner had overheard their conversation and told the girl that the store was adding staff this week and if she wanted a job, she should fill out an application and she would be hired. The daughter left the store with a job. “This is just too spooky, Mom, but I like it.”

As soon as I read the story, I wondered what the Six Steps and the One Command were and decided to buy the book. I’m now more than halfway through it. Some of the ideas are those we have all heard before about the law of attraction, our core beliefs as magnetizers, and how we create our realities through our thoughts and beliefs. However, Asara Lovejoy’s process is unique and grew out of a desperate financial situation in which she found herself.

The central idea is simple and involves a particular brain wave. The brain emits electrical charges in cycles per second. Beta waves, our normal waking consciousness, oscillates at 13-30 cycles per second. It’s the level of consciousness from which we live most of the time, meeting challenges and finding solutions. Alpha waves are measured at 7-13 cycles per seconds and are present when we meditate or daydream. Theta waves oscillate at 4-7 cycles per second and is what the author calls our Source Mind; delta waves oscillate at .01-4 cycles per second and are associated with deep sleep. Gamma brain waves are a relatively new research area, are the fastest documented brain wave frequency and are associated with intelligence, compassion, and linking and processing information from other parts of the brain.

Lovejoy contends that the beta state of consciousness is “the most limited and smallest sphere of influence you have, and is tied to the fearful thoughts in the mundane world and the collective mind… This is where you experience struggle and opposition.” Beta is where we spend 99 percent of our time trying to figure out our problems and while it’s a wonderful state for action, it’s the “least resourceful state for attracting that next level of our achievement or unexpected gifts.”

So her technique involves accessing the theta brain wave, “the path to your immeasurable good,” and involves six steps. On six separate sheets of paper, write the words GROUND, ALIGN, GO TO THETA, COMMAND, EXPAND, RECEIVE WITH GRATITUDE. It’s best to work with a partner and use Lovejoy’s script for each step. But you can also do it on your own once you know the steps.

Place the sheets of paper in a row on the floor. Before you step onto the sheet that says GROUND, think of what you want, and phrase it this way: I don’t know how my (income increases, my health improves, my book sells, my marriage flourishes). I only know that it does and I am fulfilled.

The actual physical steps from one sheet of paper to the next only has to be done two or three times. After that, your inner intelligence can do it without the physical steps.

GROUND: you ground yourself through the earth – its magnetic field, it strength, its life-giving properties.

ALIGN: Here, you align with this earth energy as it flows up through your body and into your heart

GO TO THETA: As you imagine a field of energy flowing through you, down into the earth, and back up through your body and out of the top of your head, let your eyes look upward as your lids are closed. This is where you connect with the theta brainwave.

ONE COMMAND: Hold the thought of what you want to create

Take a look at the video where she talks about the process:

 EXPAND: Let your idea grow larger than what you initially conceived

RECEIVE IN GRATITUDE: Just what it sounds like: thank you.

The wording of the Command is important. Lovejoy says that the words, I don’t know how…. trips up the ego and enables the Theta to take over. Everything should be stated in present tense.

So, we’ve doing the activity. Does it work? Yes. Less than 24 hours after buying the book, we received a wire transfer for several thousand dollars, a royalty payment we hadn’t expected. We’ll be doing this daily and will report back. If any of you have success with her techniques, let us know!

On this date, 26 years ago, I was  in an OB ward in a Fort Lauderdale hospital. I was 42 years old and my daughter was struggling to be born. I had been in labor for nearly 30 hours and my OB wanted to give me an epidural for pain. I told him to forget it – but not in such civil language – and asked for an alternative. A nurse injected me with Demerol and suddenly, I was elsewhere.

Demerol is an opiate, a narcotic.  It mitigated the pain instead of vanquishing it, but whisked me away into some other space where my unborn daughter was saying good-bye to a bunch of people who loved her. I tried to explain to Rob what I was seeing and feeling, but my words came out as gibberish. Then, suddenly, I was in the delivery room and screaming.

Megan was breech. Fortunately- and synchronistically – my regular OB was gone that weekend and the substitute OB was an expert in forceps. Megan was born at 8:10 PM on August 31, 1989. I know the time because there was a large circular clock on the delivery room wall and as an astrologer, I wanted that time of birth.

During my first night in the maternity ward, the nurse had just brought Megan in for a feeding. I didn’t have enough milk and had to give her a bottle. After the nurse returned to take her back to the nursery, I collapsed against the pillow and shut my eyes and heard someone calling my name. I was in a ward with three other women and thought it was one of them. I sat up, looked around, but the other three women were asleep.

I lay back down and shut my eyes and was dropping off to sleep when it happened again – my name being called. This time, I realized it was an internal thing, so I just lay there and thought, Who’s calling me?

 I had a very clear image of a young blonde woman whom I knew was Megan, at some time in the future. She may have been in her forties and was in the midst of a regression. She became aware of me and asked about the circumstances of her birth and her birth information, like place and time. She asked where Rob and I lived when she was born and other particulars about our lives and what was going on in the world.

I gave her all the information and asked why she needed it. She said that a lot of information had been lost in some catastrophe – my sense was that it related to climate. Then she thanked me and that was it. I sat up in bed, blown away by what had just happened, and decided that as soon as Megan was old enough to understand, I would tell her all this and make sure she knew all the details she’d requested.

Several days after she was born, my friend and astrology mentor Renie Wiley stopped by our place to talk about Megan’s natal chart. She had spelled Rob during my long labor so that he could get some sleep and as soon as I was out of the hospital, had sent me to a local New Age bookstore to getg Megan’s birth chart done. This was in the days before smart phones and apps that enable me to erect a natal chart in five seconds.

“My God, this girl is artistic, has a wonderful imagination and is quite intuitive. She has a way with animals, too, and if she doesn’t go to vet school, she’ll do this animal thing in some other unique way. She’s very bright.

“She’s going to have allergies – but she’ll move past it. For most of her childhood, I think she’ll be a picky eater. She’ll grow out of it, though. And with three planets in Virgo, she’ll also try her hand at writing. That South Node in Leo indicates she may delve into acting at some point. And oh, she’s going to have tons of friends and they’re all going to congregate at your place.

“If she ever has a 9-5 job, she’ll be bored to tears. Her career will be erratic, unique, she’ll create her own niche and art and animals will be a part of whatever she does. There are strong past life connections between her chart and yours and Rob’s. She’s a joyful soul, Trish.”

There was a lot more. But today, 26 years after Megan was born, I’m happy to report that much of what Renie said that day is true. Megan was a very picker eater as a kid, had allergies and outgrew them, and has always loved animals. The first word she uttered, at seven months, was cat. The second word was dada. She attended a dramatic arts high school and majored in art in college. She did an internship at Dolphins Plus in the Florida Keys, taking care of dolphins, and for her senior year thesis did a series of dolphin paintings based on underwater photos she had taken. Fractured Perspectives asks: who is imprisoned? The dolphins or us? She also did an internship at Disney’s Epcot, working with dolphins.

Today, she has three part-time jobs- as a dog walker, an artist for Paint Nite, and recently began painting portraits of people’s pets.

She is deeply intuitive, is writing a novel, still eats coffee yogurt for breakfast, and is the most joyful person I’ve ever known.

Happy birthday, Megger!

For decades, psychology was considered a woo-woo science, wrapped in a history of mysticism. But by the mid-twentieth century, the study of the human mind and its functions had become respectable in the eyes of mainstream science. The paranormal was labeled ‘magical thinking’ and researchers often linked such beliefs with a pathological condition, such as psychosis.

To this day, mainstream psychologists tend to be dismissive of psychic abilities, though not always relating it to mental illness. So it’s refreshing to encounter a leading researcher in the field (of psychology, not parapsychology) who challenges the norm. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer was one such outlier, a psychoanalyst and internationally acclaimed clinician-scholar who taught at the University of California at Berkeley until her death in 2005.

Rather than ignoring uncanny experiences as mere anomalies not worthy of consideration or study, she gathered example of the paranormal and tried to understand them. Her book, Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind was published after her death at age 57. Even before the book was published, however, her view of consciousness—described as ‘coincidence theory’—was the subject of a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine, which called it one of the ‘most exciting’ new ideas of 2003.

In the book, Mayer describes one particularly intriguing story that she said triggered her interest in what she called ‘extraordinary knowing.’ Here it is:

A rare antique harp that she owned was stolen following a Christmas concert at a theater where her 11-year-old daughter was playing. Mayer filed a police report, contacted instrument dealers around the country, the American Harp Society newsletters, even got a news story on CBS-TV. No luck.

A while later, a friend suggested that she take an unusual approach, contacting a dowser. At that time, Mayer thought dowser were people who tried to find underground water with forked sticks. But by then she was willing to try anything, and was informed that really good dowsers could find lost objects.

Upon the recommendation of her friend, Mayer called Harold McCoy, the president of the American Society of Dowsers, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, about 1,600 away. She asked if he could help locate the missing harp. That call changed her perspective on what was possible.

To her surprise, he said: “Give me a second. I’ll tell you if it’s still in Oakland.” After a pause, he continued: “Well, it’s still there. Send me a street map of Oakland and I’ll locate that harp for you.” She was skeptical, but over-nighted a city map to McCoy.

He called back two days later. “Well, I got that harp located. It’s in the second house on the right on D—— Street, just off L———- Avenue.”

Mayer had never heard of either street, but she drove there, wrote down the address, then phone the police and gave them the tip. They didn’t want to get involved because the lead came from a dowser. They refused to issue a search warrant and said they were closing the case. They told her the harp had probably been sold and was long gone.

But Mayer refused to give up. She posted flyers about a lost harp in a two-block area around the house and waited. Three days later, a man called to say he’d seen a flyer, and that his next-door neighbor had recently obtained a harp like the one that was missing and had shown it to him. He offered to get the harp and return it. Two weeks later, after a series of phone calls, the harp was delivered to Mayer in the rear parking lot of an all-night Safeway.

Extraordinary knowing, indeed.

Tropical Storm Erika is, I think, a trickster.

It came in on the heels of Tropical Storm Danny, which dissipated in the Caribbean last week. For the past several days, I’ve watched the National Hurricane Center – the government’s agency – and Accuweather, a private weather outfit – track the storm. The predictions have vacillated from the storm tracking away from Florida to coming right into Palm Beach County, where we live.

A tropical storm is not a hurricane. Although TS often have an eye, an area of circulation like a hurricane, they are less organized and the winds are below 74 m.p.h. But they do pack a lot of rain. Erika, for instance, dumped 12 inches of rain in 12 hours on the island of Dominica, resulting in flash floods, mudslides, and four fatalities.

In 2012, TS Isaac stalled over our area for hours and dumped so much rain that our neighborhood flooded to the point where our mailbox became an island. I was coming home from the gym during the torrential downpour, my car stalled out, and I eventually had to have the engine replaced. We couldn’t get out of our neighborhood for two days.

Today I started going through our hurricane supplies – which haven’t seen the light of day in 10 years, since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. I found useless flashlights, useless battery-operated lanterns, corroded batteries, portable fans that no longer worked. So I made my hurricane run. I stopped by our local Walgreens drug store first – no flashlights, a paltry selection of batteries. But their coolers were on sale, so I bought one.

I moved on to the grocery store, where vast palettes of bottled water took up the front of the store, where canned goods had been pretty much cleaned out, and flashlights were gone. I stocked up on food supplies I thought we might need – including pet food for two dogs and two cats. But tomorrow I’ll make another run for stuff I overlooked. At another drug store, I bought a ten-pound bag of ice. Meanwhile, Rob was at another place, filling several containers with gas for the generator that has sat in our garage since 2005 and for a propane tank so we can use the grill.

In many ways, the bare shelves and the lack of goods reminds me of what used to happen in Venezuela when I was a kid and a revolution was in the works. Schools closed, grocery store shelves laid bare, gas stations lined with cars waiting for a pump so tanks could be topped off.

After the hurricane season of 2005 – when we were hit three times and lost power for a total of about two weeks – all gas stations in South Florida were supposed to have backup generators. I discovered tonight, thanks to a map on a local website, that only a handful in our area have those generators. So, tomorrow, we top off our car gas tanks as well.

The most recent forecast for the storm is that if it survives passage through an unfavorable area in the Caribbean without being torn apart, it will hit our county as a cat 1 hurricane. I remember that in October 2005, when I heard the Wilma was just a cat 1, I didn’t worry too much about it.Big mistake.

At one point in its existence, Wilma had become a cat 5 hurricane, with winds of 185 m.p.h, and a barometric pressure of just 882 millibars. And that pressure is the telling factor. When it stalled out over our area, the skylights in our roof were vibrating so violently I was sure they were going to pop out. Rob and I took turns gripping the handle of our front door, which shook so violently we thought it would explode outward from the pressure, which wasn’t anywhere near 882 mb at that point. Fortunately, Wilma was moving fast.

The aftermath of a hurricane is usually worse than the hurricane itself, unless you’re dealing with a Katrina, which occurred a decade ago today, as I’m writing this. Katrina brought the city of New Orleans to its knees, 1,800 people died, and the government negligence exposed the Bush administration for the incompetent idiots they were. In the absence of electricity, the heat and humidity and the bugs are the worst of it. But this time, we have a generator that we can power up as soon as the storm has passed. It means we can plug in the fridge. It means we won’t lose frozen foods.  It means we can take turns standing in front of the fridge with the door open so we can cool off.

So if you leave comments that don’t appear on the blog, it means we don’t have electricity or Internet. It means we are going quietly crazy here in South Florida and are contemplating a move to the mountains!

Oh, Erika. You trickster. Surprise us! Get shredded to bits before you reach the south Atlantic waters where you could strengthen. Just move on out to sea. You aren’t welcome here.