Tonight, there was something sticky on the floor in front of the refrigerator. I asked Kathryn if she knew what it was. “It might be watermelon,” she said. She went on to explain the watermelon fell out onto the floor. When I asked why she didn’t clean it up, she replied “I did, I let the dog lick it up.”  Well, there you go. Now that her sister is gone, she has found someone else to blame.

Meanwhile, as we try to watch “Wheel of Fortune” which Mike and I use to keep our minds sharp, severe weather alerts are interrupting the show. Mike thinks we make too big out a deal out of normal storms. I think, since the derecho a few years ago, we are more alert to severe weather. That storm was supposed to be strong but I’m not sure it was expected to shut the area down for so many days. I remember walking the dog the next morning thinking it looked like a nature war zone – trees down, leaves and branches everywhere. Hope we won’t experience that anytime soon.

I’m currently listening to Carl Hiaasen’s book “Dance of the Reptiles” in the car on the way to work. This book is a collection of his columns. and the topics generally have an environmental theme of some sort in them. As a Floridian, he is shocked to see the beauty of the state he grew up in, disappear as we continue to build on the land and disrespect the animals and nature there. All his fiction books have a similar theme. If you haven’t read any of his books, you should. Very funny.

Maybe it is global warming that caused the dercho and this severe weather we see across the country. I’d never heard of the term derecho before that storm a few years ago and now I see it all the time. Is it new? Maybe El Nino, whatever that weather system is, is causing all this bad weather. If we asked, he’d probably blame his sister, El Nina. Unless they have a dog.