Irma Is a Bitch

Okay so this blog title is a bit on the nose, but, gentle readers, I am tired, body and soul, and it's that nasty, evil Irma "I am a Category 5 and will fuck you up!" storm's fault, and I am all out of filters, gentle readers, I must warn you right now!

I tell you beloved ones, this storm has wreaked havoc upon me by not wreaking any actual havoc upon me at all but upon others whom I could not help and this has pissed me off.  You see, my dearest sister, Gretchen, who has appeared on this blog before, mostly when making fun of my texting failures, celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Caribbean island of Saba last week.  Also, she took her husband with her.

(Personally, if I'd been living with someone for twenty years, I would celebrate by going off to an island paradise alone, but that's why my sister is in a happy marriage and I have two ungrateful cats.)

But this bitch Irma comes along, and my sister has to flee.  Unfortunately, she is not faster than a speeding-bitch hurricane, and they got stuck on St. Martin, and had to live through 185 mph winds with no electricity or cell phones or running water or internet, and I didn't know for hours and hours if they were alive or dead, but then they called and were alive!  But they were stuck and could not get off of the island.  So that's when I decided to try to help.

So, precious ones, I started calling embassies and consulates, and, okay, I should have looked up the difference between those before writing this blog, but I have been holding off drinking any wine while this has been going on, and I am damned tired, so just leave me alone, okay?  Go google it yourself.

Now, St. Martin is half French and half Dutch and very, very flattened and destroyed by Bitch Irma, but I was a French major in college and lived in Paris, so I called all the numbers I found on the internet for help for Americans trapped on St Martin by the Bitch.

The first phone call went like this:

Person at consulate or embassy or whatever it was:  "Bonjour?"

Me: <gasps, screams and hangs up>

Okay, that didn't go so well.  I panicked.  But after counting to ten a couple of times, I tried again, and dredged up my rusty French and talked to someone who was very, very polite and no help whatsoever, but it was not his fault.  It was that Bitch's fault because she was still out there, churning away as a Category 5 and heading north.

I really hate that Bitch Irma.  Did I mention that, beloved readers?

So I went back on the internet where I had two hundred friend requests, all from Gretchen's friends (because, as I mentioned, she is popular and nice and friendly, and everyone was assuming I would be able to tell them something and was not the kind of person to randomly scream and hang up on consulates and embassies in a panic).  Anyway, I accepted all these requests and then I searched and searched and discovered other people were recommending contacting the Dutch consulate even though Gretchen was on the French side.  So I tried that, but I got an answering machine, and it was talking to me in Dutch.

So then I called all the U.S. Senators I could think of to find out if they knew anything, and--now I'm sure this will come as a great shock to all of you--I found out that they knew nothing at all.

Finally, I was on the twitter and found that there was an emergency number, but I was afraid to call it and get talked to in Dutch because if I screamed at French I figured I would just vomit or something when confronted with Dutch, but--oh frabjous day!--I have a friend who does speak Dutch!  She called for me and found out that everyone apparently also spoke English on that emergency line, which I would have known if I weren't afraid of screaming and vomiting at an ambassador or something.

I mean, I'd been calling U.S. Senators, and I don't know what gets you put on Homeland Security's Big List of Evil, but maybe screaming and hanging up at consulates will do it?  I don't know.  Later I tweeted at Homeland Security, but they did not tweet me back, so I think I'm in the Big Book of Evil now regardless.

And if so, I know it's that Bitch Irma's fault.

Also, the lovely people at the emergency line were not actually any help.  There was a place on-line to register people with the State Department, and I filled it out six times and got an error message every time, and then I had to stop and cry for a while.  Luckily, Gretchen's mother-in-law had already successfully registered her and her wonderful husband, so this crying was not necessary at all.

It felt good, though.

So then photos of St. Martin starting showing up on the internet and...they are very , very awful, and I shouted a bit and maybe broke a particularly ugly piece of pottery, but then found out that the articles had by-lines and the by-lines linked to email addresses, and I did a scary thing and started emailing reporters.

Well, now my sister is famous for being stranded by the Bitch Irma, which is not what they called her in the NY Post, but I forgot to suggest it, so that's not their fault, really.  You can google my sister and see that she even made the London papers, and that was great but she was still on St. Martin and had no power and no water and was running out of food, and I was freaking out.

So I tried to distract myself by research, my dear ones, because research is a Thing I Do.  I wanted to find out when a steampunk film called Adèle Blanc-Sec was made because I'm teaching steampunk fiction this semester--and it is the very coolest class, of course--and instead of just using the google, I made a big mistake and asked Siri about it.

Siri is also a bitch, my friends.

Can you guess what she did?  I know you can because I only have ten followers of this blog and you all were her victims, weren't you?  That Siri, she somehow texted song lyrics from Adele (the singer, not the film) to half of my contacts list in the middle of the night.  And, okay, I said my sister is popular, but it's gratifying that so many people freaked out at those lyrics and texted and emailed me to tell me they love me and not to kill myself.  Because, you know, Adele lyrics out of context make you sound suicidal, I guess.

Thank you for all of the suicide hotline numbers, by the way.

So now That Bitch Irma has upset all my friends and she hadn't even reached Florida yet.

I really hate that bitch. Have you seen photos of those islands?

Anyway, this entry is too long now, and I am going to go have that glass of wine at last because my sister and brother-in-law were flown out to Puerto Rico on a military plane today, and they are safe now, and even though they aren't home yet, they have hot showers and food, and I am so relieved and happy.

But that Irma bitch has really fucked up those islands, so if you can donate something to help them, any of them, beloveds, you might do that.  Don't just scream and hang up.