Weather Related Event

It is time that the world recognized a "Shit Storm" as an official weather related event with all of the accompanying pity and insurance protection normally afforded to other events of this kind.  I feel very strongly that we would all be better prepared to weather the storm if we knew we could count on a few of the following:

Shit Storm Insurance.  Prepared by the same guy who does your car and your house of course, and specifically tailored to your potential needs.  If you have a dog, you'll need coverage for rapid response carpet cleaning so when the dog pukes in the foyer as you are on your way to the airport to pick up your in-laws you can hit speed dial...shit storm damage covered.  If you have a clumsy husband, you'll need coverage for pizza and wine delivery so when he slides an entire homemade pizza onto the floor instead of into the oven just as the children are getting into bed and you emerge starving from the end of the hallway to come to his aid and proceed to knock the opened bottle of red wine onto the freshly painted wall you can hit speed dial...shit storm damage covered.

Climatology experts able to predict with varying levels of incompetence when and where such an event is likely to occur.  Hurricanes and tornadoes have entire fields of science dedicated to studying their patterns.  Our lives have climates too and there is certainly a science to predicting how when you're stressed, or pressed for time, or running out of cash, or blissfully happy...a Shit Storm is more likely to descend.

24 hour news coverage with that guy from the weather channel standing in the middle of it in some sort of protective clothing (although I'm not sure even LL Bean can design a garment appropriate for protecting one's self from the Shit Storms that spring up in life when you least expect them.)  I'm very certain that if he were to tell me to, "Just hunker down and wait it out." I would feel better.

A .gov website telling you exactly what kinds of items you should be storing in your home to be best prepared for this type of event...(therapist, pastor, yoga instructor, Tylenol, red wine, stack of mind numbing novels about vampires so when you're awake at 2am worrying at least you'll have something to read, etc.)

Friends and neighbors from unaffected locales who come by after it's over and help you rebuild what has been lost (your patience, your confidence, your living room rug, your calm exterior) arms laden with banana bread and frozen casseroles, of course.

A line of cards from Hallmark (although I've never seen one that reads "As You Recover from the Flood").  Shuffled among the bills (the report from the Shit Storm insurance adjuster) and snail mail that clutters the post after a Shit Storm , it would be nice to find a note from a friend with gloriously rhyming adjectives about how the storm is over and there is a light at the end of the rain and you've emerged a stronger soul and life doesn't give us anything we can't handle...you know the crap we need to hear even though it doesn't really mean anything.  But hey!  It rhymes!

A celebrity TV special with Cheryl Crow standing over the 1-800 number in her Jimmy Choos talking about how brave you have been and how amazing it is that you have come away relatively unharmed.  Music montages and video clips included of course, reminding all the viewers how something like this hits so close to home and how it could have been any one of us standing in the dog vomit talking to the clerk at the county courthouse about how it was a simple oversight that your forgot to pay the citation and that you really don't deserve to have your driver's license suspended right before your husband is headed out of town for 5 days and how it might just happen to them someday.

Yes!  I think it is time for the survivors of Shit Storms all across this great nation to unite as one and have our poop squalls recognized as the tragedies they truly are.  Just sayin'.