We are into the home stretch, hurricane-seasonwise. September is the month of heaviest storm activity. So far this month, no actual storms here in Miami, just unrelenting rain. Which is actually kind of nice. Everything gets very green, and all the shrubbery gets extra-thick and the grass grows so fast you can almost watch it get taller. If it weren't raining too hard to see across the yard.

There is a newly named storm out east in the ocean. Florence. Tropical Storm Florence. There is a very dark part of me that considers this a bad omen. Florence is my mother's name. I have this uncomfortable feeling that that Florence, should it change course and become a hurricane, could take my Florence away.

I went to visit my mummy this weekend. She can usually make one coherent sentence per visit. It's sometimes a sad thing, like when she announced "I don't know where that is. I'll have to ask Max where he put it." Sometimes its a wonderful thing, like the day she looked around and said "Life is beautiful."

This weekend, though, it was a mean thing, and it made me cry. She wasn't opening her eyes. She didn't seem to know I was there. I held her hand and talked to her. Then I petted her head and she pulled away from me and snapped "Don't do that with my hair."

Great.

I'm going to make myself a cup of hot tea and consider the piles on paper on my desk and what options I have for dealing with them.