Today's going to be a bit of a depressing post, so bear with me. I am extremely stressed at the moment.
As most of you know, my mother, my sister, her daughter and my sister's boyfriend live in tropical North Queensland. You may have heard of the floods that recently passed through Queensland. Well, mother nature is at it again.
Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a category 5 cyclone with a front of 500 km, has crossed into North Queensland near Mission Beach. A category 5 is about the worst you can get. Wind speeds in a category 5 exceed 250 km/h. Yasi has wind speeds of an estimated 300-330 km/h. The size of this storm is simply massive and would cover much of the U.S.
My mother lives right on the beach in North Queensland, but has moved into Townsville with my sister and her family to try and weather out this storm. She doesn't expect to have a house to return to when this storm is over.
There is already flooding caused by storm surges. They reckon Yasi will be the worst storm ever to hit Australia.
As of about an hour ago, they are all alright. There is a tree down in the yard, and power outages throughout Townsville. I haven't heard from them since, so I expect the power has gone out for them as well.
I have no choice but to sit tight and wait for news.
In the meantime, I'm ranging between gentle calm and panicked tears. I'm at work, so I'm trying not to stress out too much over this.
Be gentle with me today, though. I'm feeling way more fragile than usual!
Mother nature is unimpressed with southern Ontario as well. We are in what media outlets are calling "Snow-mageddon." Frankly, it's not that bad. Just a lot of snow and high winds. It is the biggest storm in the past two years. Toronto experienced a peculiar weather anomaly - lightening and thunder with their snow dump. Lightening and thunder along with snow are most usually unheard of.
Still, we have it pretty lucky up here.
Yesterday was a difficult day for writing, not because I found it difficult to write, but because what I was writing was difficult material. I spent the lunch hour after writing my 3 000 words crying in the washroom. Yes, it was that difficult.
News of Yasi's upgrade to category 5 and stress over my family in Australia didn't help either.
Right now I just was to disappear into my bedroom with a hot cuppa and some sad music. Instead, I'll just bury myself in the story I'm writing. Someone else's misery is much easier to handle!
In the meantime, here's today's Forgotten English word:
Jackleg:
A lawyer whose record would not be regarded in a desirable light; this term is equivalent to black-leg.
- John Farmer's Americanisms - Old and New, 1889
An incompetent or unskilled or unprincipled person; frequently used of lawyers and preachers.
- Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
