Being the hurricane survivor veterans of 15 years and
counting, we thought we had it figured out.
From Charlie, Jeanne, Frances, Irma, Michael – each uninvited guest coming
our way taught us something new. Over time, we’ve developed a routine that
encompasses a variety of preparations we tweak each hurricane season as fresh,
tested-in-real-life data becomes available to us under the category of ‘Experience’.
One big item we learned early on became house cleaning. I
know it sounds counter intuitive to bother with cleaning the house before the
hurricane, but short of a complete disaster and losing your house or at least a
roof, this strange ritual of housecleaning makes a huge difference in the days preceding
and days that follow the storm.
Sometimes we lose power, and sometimes even water supplies can be
limited, so having empty laundry basket keeps us from experiencing a different
kind of emergency, like no clean underwear. After being surprised by Charlie,
our first real hurricane, this became a must for our family, right along removing
or securing projectiles around our house.
This year, with monster hurricane Dorian’s path threatening
central Florida, we raised our housecleaning to an unprecedented level by
cleaning out our garage. It seemed crazy
keeping all our worthless junk safe under the roof while leaving our only vehicle
outside exposed to the mercy (or mercilessness) of Cat 5.
With the car in, we could sigh a big sigh of relief. We did
everything we could, the rest is in God’s hands. There was a huge sense of
satisfaction knowing,
We were PREPARED! We are READY! We GOT THIS!
I even remembered how with the disruption of the routine,
and easy access to the stockpiles of convenient (read ‘junk’) food, the biggest hurricane battle tends to be the
one with the bulge.
“Not this time!” I was determined and stock piled on peaches, pears,
apples and bananas, carrots, celery and home-made hummus.
Then, we waited. And waited. And watched and waited. And started nibbling on our healthy foods while
binge-watching weather channel. The
storm was intensifying, getting more threatening, bigger and bigger, and slower
and SLOWER, until it stalled over the poor Bahamas battering it heartlessly with Cat 5 squalls.
It was supposed to arrive on Sunday here, and it’s Tuesday and
it STILL isn’t here.
We actually polished off our healthy hurricane stash while the hurricane was still hundreds of miles away!! Yesterday we made a quick Walmart run to restock but while we were getting peaches, grapes and milk, I
noticed that their Bakery Department must have over-baked and had all these amazing goods on
clearance – pumpkin and apple pies, apple fritters, plain donuts and Persian cinnamon
rolls... for pennies!!! Who can resist that???
As they say, "The road to hell is paved by good intentions"...
As they say, "The road to hell is paved by good intentions"...
We came home loaded, promising ourselves self-control, then making
powerful excuses justified by ‘all the stress that hurricane caused us’… and ‘we
were doing so well until…”
And the storm is still over three hundred miles away…
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