Careful what I wish for

I love wind, so I was elated to hear that there’s a giant storm heading toward the Washington coast today. Words like “hurricane force” are being bandied about.

Of course Washingtonians take this kind of rhetoric with a grain of salt. It’s a standing joke here that the TV news channels like to gin up storm of the century stories. Theories run toward the they-must-own-stock-in-a-candle-company variety. So we’ll see.

Unfortunately for me, the weatherman says the high winds won’t reach us inland. The forecast for my area says rain and 20 mph winds. But I’m betting there will be some residual so that we get a little adrenaline rush here.

Wind of course tends to kick up the water – and knock down trees, and encourage boats to drag anchor. The more of these kinds of things one has the more one worries about storms.

We’ve got lots of trees around us, all of them apparently safe except one. Over the last couple of years we’ve been watching a fir on the neighbor’s property drip more and more sap from a break in its bark about half way up. Should that succumb to the force of an unusually strong south wind the top of that tree could make a dent in our roof, more likely the deck outside our dining room.

Then there’s Anonymous. She of the substandard tackle and handlers. She’s ridden out a lot of storms, and she sits in a spot that’s protected from all but the worst winter storms. But on a dark and stormy night horror scenarios involving her fragile white skin and the neighbor’s hulking black dock do run through my mind.