We here in the Mitten State, worry about tornadoes.  I don't know why---they are infrequent and only do a small area of damage.  It is unlikely we will ever have a hurricane form over the Great Lakes...although I suppose it IS possible for Michigan someday to "cave in" and the Great Lakes merge over the top of us and create one huge Great Lake.  Not something I get anxious or worry about.

This darn hurricane Florence has me worried.  Will it affect me?  We might get some residual rain, like we did with Gordon, but it will be no big deal.  I don't think I know anyone who lives on the coast of the southern states--Trudy?  How close are you to the coast?  Ernestine?  My Virginia friends--I think you are inland enough to be safe from the "surge".

I am however, worried about my little cottage on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Well, it's not exactly "mine", in that I don't hold the deed, but...................

I first visited the Outer Banks in 1986.  I stayed in a high rise hotel.  Had to walk the boardwalk, across the protected dunes to get to the beach.  It seemed like a long walk even back then.

I returned again in 1995, with my friend and traveling buddy, Ernie.  Again, stayed in a hotel and had to walk a ways to get to waters edge.

I determined then that one day I would return, rent a cottage right on the beach and stay for a week.

I scrolled through real estate websites in 2008 and found a neat little place, right at the edge of the dune and steps away from waters edge.  I booked it for the next May.

The night before Fred and I were to leave, car all packed, mail held, all that, he had a major heart attack.  While he was in surgery, I called the real estate agent and told her what had happened.  She graciously returned the deposit I had made.

Fred was doing well by summer's end and wanted to make that trip.  The poor man knew how much I wanted to go...almost needed to go.  I am fearfully afraid of big water.  Almost drowned twice in my younger life.  I don't want to go on or in big water, but had found out years past, how soothing the ocean is.  Hearing the waves, coming in and going back out--that constant rhythm seemed to take all my anxiety and stress away.

So in September of 2009, I called the agent and got that little cottage for May 2010.

I couldn't believe it when we arrived.  There it sat--at the edge of the dune.  Stairs at the far end of the porch, led down to the beach.
Dolphins View it was called and we saw many every day.

The view from my recliner inside.

At high tide, the ocean came in and went under the porch.  Rather unsettling to me, but Fred reassured me that the pilings, holding up the house, were buried deep and we would not float away.

Yes--we traveled way up to Corolla at the north end of the Outer Banks and down to the southern end and the light house at Cape Hatteras.

and up the road a few miles to Kitty Hawk....

but, for three days in a row, we just stayed in our little "home" and enjoyed the ocean.

My sweet Fred and Tootz.

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I have been so homesick for that cottage.  I know I will never get back there.  Never see or hear the ocean again.

It makes me worry that Florence is going to take my sweet little cottage off into the deep.