Prepping For Sandy

It may come as a surprise to you, but I've been obsessively watching The Weather Channel for days now. It seems Hurricane Sandy is coming and it's never going to leave.

Ordinarily my pathologically optimistic nature kicks in and I choose not to worry. And I'm not worrying nearly as much as I should. The past two big bad weather events around here (Tropical Storm Irene which was devastating in this area and the big and unnecessary Halloween snowstorm) didn't interrupt my electrical service one bit. Other people lost their electricity for a week, and my clocks didn't even blink. In fact, the last blackout I can remember happened the night of the Olympic women's figure skating final, and even then, semi-miraculously, the electricity came back in time for me to watch the final flight (Kim Yu Na won).

But at some point one of the cheery people on the Weather Channel assured us that approximately a zillion trillion people are going to lose their electricity for days and days and days, and we should all go out and buy board games so kids will have something to do.

That sounded uncomfortably familiar. I realized I'd written scenes like that in Life As We Knew It. And that was when I decided to take action.

I went to the supermarket Friday and Saturday and today I went to every store I could find to buy batteries. In front of the CVS Pharmacy in Goshen, NY, I ran into a woman who told me she'd bought some D batteries from a hardware store where they really ripped her off, and I thought, I wrote that scene in The Dead And The Gone. But I didn't tell her that.

As it happens, the only batteries CVS had were Double As, which would come in very handy if I needed to change batteries in my remote control during the endless blackout, but I doubt that will be an issue.

But I'm set. I brought in my welcome mat. I got a radio working on batteries and checked my two flashlights every ten minutes. I took a novel (The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton) out of the library so I'll have something to read if (when) my cable goes out. My freezer has ice cubes and bottles of water scattered around. Since I don't like drinking warm water, I bought juice boxes and apple cider. I also got oranges and grapes to prevent scurvy.  Just to be on the safe side, I bought muffins and chocolate chip cookies, as well as stealing candy from my mother.  I cashed a check and promptly spent all of it on batteries and  juice boxes and apple cider and oranges and grapes and muffins and cookies, so it's a good thing my mother had that candy for me to steal. I always have candles, so I don't worry about that.

And I bought a new toy for Scooter, to keep him from being bored.

Scooter pondered what to do about this all.

Then he checked it all out.

His new toy was definitely the most interesting thing.

I also brought his carrier in, in case we have to make a fast exit.

But that was of no interest to him.

Take care everybody. I'll be back as soon as Sandy lets me!