I shudder to think of the consequences of not putting up shutters

To shutter or not to shutter, that is the question.

We all work hard. So hard in fact, that when we're not on the job, it sure is nice to be a little lazy.

Hurricanes run over lazy people.

But there I was, standing in front of my house, looking to see what the neighbors were doing. It was a day before Idalia was going to pass our coast, or make a right turn and blow us to pieces.

Certainly, my neighbors knew better than Jim Cantore.

No one, except my 87-year-old neighbor, had put up a single shutter. All righty then, no shutters for me, thank goodness.

Shutters can be a pain. You are up on the ladder, reaching for those higher screws with the battery drill you use once every three years, and your body is stretched out like you are doing yoga, even though the most stretching you normally do is to put on your socks.

Then the screw falls to the ground, and you, of course, don't have a backup in your pocket. You leave the drill on top of the ladder, and make your way down, shaking the ladder until the drill rattles loose, and falls directly upon your shoulder.

Oh crap.

But back up the ladder you go, using your good arm to finish the job.

That's when your drill, which has more power than a speeding locomotive, takes control like one of those rogue robots in the futuristic thriller "I, Robot." You get that screw nice and snug, but the drill plows forward anyway. It's got its own mind.

Errrrrrrrruuuuuuuppppp.

You get the thing stopped, and you look at the screw head, which used to be a screw head but now resembles the head of a nail. All those threads have been obliterated. No big deal for today, but oh my, that's going to be fun when it comes time to take down the shutter.

You finally circle your house and finish, managing to "only" strip three other screw heads. You put all the tools away and go into your house, and suddenly, you understand the term man cave, or better said, cave man.

You walk around turning on lights, but you still feel like you are sentenced to solitary confinement on Devil's Island. It is a bleak feeling, and the comfort that you would have gotten through these safety measures has been gobbled up by claustrophobia and being confined to a gopher hole.

You turn on your television, and watch hour after hour of the Weather Channel, like its some kind of telethon raising money for a good cause. But  the only special guests are hurricane experts showing you re-creations of an 8-foot storm surge and 120 mph winds. "You won't survive this," is the constant reminder.

So there you are sitting in the cave, your bathtub filled with water, your battery lamps on the counter, your cans of Dinty Moore beef stew dominating a shelf of your pantry.

Then the hurricane veers to the northwest. Those Weather Channel reporters stationed on Clearwater Beach pack up and head north, so they can find a better place to dodge blowing debris.

You are left with a big "never mind," except that you are constantly told that you don't have to be in the "cone" to feel devastating impacts from the hurricane. Yes, there are tornado warnings, and after all, the hurricane could change its mind and make a big turn.

After walking past the wall of bottled water by your front door, you see that the hurricane has, indeed, passed, and you need to pick up four palm fronds in your yard. All that angst for nothing.

What to do in the future?

Well, Homeguide.com lists hurricane windows as costing between $400 to $2,400 apiece depending on the brand. Architectural Digest lists the national average cost of hurricane-impact windows to be $5,332 for an entire home, but number of windows figures into that and you can bet Florida brings that average up from a much lower level. For many of us, that is not an option.

Getting someone to put up your shutters could lessen your frustrations and lighten your wallet, if you can even get someone to come to your house as a hurricane approaches. You probably are looking at $300 to $500 to put them up and take them down. I again stress, if you can get someone to come to your house.

Most people would like to wait as long as possible before making a decision about whether or not to put up shutters. So the search for laborers to do the work at the last minute can be futile.

Even if you get a worker, there is no guarantee he or she will show up. Before Hurricane Ian, the guy who confirmed to put up my shutters called and cancelled, saying he was tired and it was raining. Eight hours before Ian arrived, I was up on the ladder putting up shutters in the rain.

Add it all up and it appears we should wait until the last minute and only put up the shutters if we are getting a direct hit.

Ahhh, but no.

It's one of those uncertainties of life that we just don't know a hurricane's exact path. Despite all the Weather Channel's "We're all going to die" tone pre-hurricane, it is a providing a service that is necessary. Even with all the warnings, some residents of Cedar Key stayed in their homes and might have died if the hurricane had hit at high tide. Fortunately, it hit at low tide.

Here in Manatee County, a county damage assessment team issued a report Aug. 31 saying of 110,504 residential structures assessed, 32 suffered minor damage and eight had major damage. Residential damage was assessed at $1.55 million for a hurricane that missed us.

We are better armed to predict the path of a hurricane than knowing where an earthquake or a tornado will strike. In some ways, that can be a detriment because we get complacent.

As a whole community, we were complacent this time, and it worked in our favor, thank goodness. Some suggestions for the future?

By all means, watch the Weather Channel to get an overview of the situation. They do have lots of resources. But even more so, check out your local media outlets because their only concern is our area.

Listen to your public officials. In this case, Manatee County was telling its residents a couple of days in advance that the main threat to our area was storm surge. If you are in Lakewood Ranch, you knew you could relax.

Watch the number of shelters that the county opens. For Hurricane Idalia, only four shelters opened, a good sign that few people had to evacuate their homes.

Learn how to put up your shutters, better than I do. Just put one shutter up on a nice day for practice. Use that drill and make sure it is in working order. Make sure your shutters are clearly marked so you know what windows they fit.

See if you can form a neighborhood team that will help each other to put up shutters and to help those in the neighborhood who might not be physically able to put them up.

And try to remember that no matter how much a pain it was putting up your shutters, and living inside them in the past, you and your home were safe.