Weathering the Storm

It has been a week plus since we spent a day without power.  The city is still getting itself back to normal.  Sean has been continuously preparing for the storm we just had.  He's put flashlights and batteries away.  We've stocked up on some foods.  Today I finally was able to buy salt for the driveway.

The funny thing is, the things that Sean has prepared were things on which we did okay.  The most glaring example: flashlights.  We have tons of flashlights.  Not all work, but most are fine.  Saturday night prior to the storm, I told the kids to make sure they had flashlights by their beds.  This was an easy task since they have multiple flashlights from camp.  Sean had a flashlight on his bedside table.  I have a reading light.  We had two more in our dresser.  One large one, which can also be a lantern, lives on the porch with our camping lantern.  Another lives outside the kitchen.  There's one more on my keys, easily found.  Batteries have a home in the basement, also easily found.  We always have lots of AA and AAA.  Suddenly, we needed five flashlights in the dresser, with a second set of batteries for each.  The kids began to complain they no longer had flashlights.  I said something to Sean.  He returned them.  We didn't need to put them aside.  They're already findable.

Much more helpful was his regular calling of Home Depot to see when their salt came in.  I finally bought some today, three 20 lb bags, plus one to return (we borrowed one).  Oddly, I usually have 3-4 bags in the garage.  I tend to over-salt.  I don't like to slip.  Sean's been doing the salting when he leaves for work.  Unfortunately he wasn't as neurotic as I in buying the salt, and didn't tell me when we ran out.  That's unlikely to happen again.  I'll probably buy more next week.

What we haven't done- we still haven't really prepared food.  We do have lots of water and some canned foods.  For years we've talked about having a couple of cases of MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat, created for the military).  There's a pretty good kosher version made by My Own Meals.  You can eat the cold, or even get heaters.  You just prop them up on "a rock or something," and you're good to go.  It's a chemical heater.  After, you can put the heater in your pockets to keep you warm.  Hopefully Sean will work on that.  It's the one area we've allowed to really slip over the years.  Otherwise, as long as Gavi and Jesse keep dancing (see Unplugged), we'll all be fine.