By noon today Hurricane Isabel will be inland, on the coast of North Carolina and moving inward. I thought my bro-in-law was going to be in the line of fire but it turns out he won't be.

We, however, are going to get hammered.

The ex is taking John to West Virginia this afternoon which is okay because once they've gotten over the mountains they'll just see a lot of rain. FF's hometown is quite a way into West Va., far enough away from us that they'll be okay. It won't hit us until tonight anyway and by then they'll be there, or at least most of the way.

Larry stopped last night and bought extra batteries and bottled water. Lots of other people apparently had the same idea because he had to go to three places to find any. He's also gotten everything we have outside (we have a propane grill out there - that could be bad, huh?), put into the shed. I was so anxious yesterday I had to do something, anything, or I was going to bite my nails down to the wrist so I got to work clearing out that area of the basement I've been aggravated with for so long. Those boxes have been piled up all summer because of the rains and continued flooding of the basement. The claustrophobic feel of it was making me insane. I sorted through it and got it all separated into three sections; keep, trash, and donate. The stuff we're going to keep ended up piled up against the back door we never use unless we need to let a plumber in or move a piece of furniture and the christmas stuff was piled up along a wall in the laundry room. It's only temporary but it did clear out the space in the family room and leave us some room to sort through the boxes of stuff from the study. Once the storm has passed we can get started on that. I'm really looking forward to doing it.

Again, everyone in Isabels path - please be careful. I hope you all make it out okay.