Last week was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Charley, which kicked off, as the name implies, four hurricanes striking Florida in a month and a half.

Charley didn’t hit my old Tampa house. It was an interesting twenty-four hours before because my ex and I were having a screened in back porch installed. And we decided to save five hundred bucks by doing the demo of the old deck ourselves. So we had a backyard full of debris with a storm coming. My FIL at the time made multiple trips to the dump. Then after all that back breaking work, I had to take him across the bay to his place in Pinellas. Then, I got to spend more than two hours on the Howard Franklin.

Then came Frances, which was coming across the state at us. FIL and I installed mounts for storm shutters on the windows while a guy was putting up the screened in back porch. The fun part was when FIL and I were cutting the plywood. With hand tools. The guy putting in the back porch took pity on us and let us borrow is power tools. Because “it’s nice watching someone else work.”

I was working at the local Mickey D franchise during these six weeks. This is where my joke that McDonald’s only closes for three days a year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and hurricane.