Batten Down The Hatches

So Ernesto is leaving Cuba and heading our way. It looks like it will stay a Tropical Storm and even if it gains strength, it seems that it will only be a Category one Hurricane and won’t cause too much damage. Of course that’s easy for me to say; I’m in a new house with poured concrete walls and it will take quite a bit to hurt this place.

Working at a Supermarket, I see so many different people, each with a different way of looking at the coming storm. There are those that are of the Chicken Little persuasion; they have their SUV’s filled with gas cans and are buying hundreds of dollars worth of batteries, canned goods and water. They have their generators at home and are ready for the apocalypse.

The complete opposite of that is a woman I met yesterday by the name of Sara. I was in the checkstand helping get these people out of the store with their huge orders and along came Sara. Sara’s probably in her late twenties, early thirties. She only had a few items. She had three six packs of those little containers of chocolate pudding that need no refrigeration, a huge jar of peanut butter, plastic spoons and two cases of beer. She said she’d been through Wilma last year and found that when the power goes out and everything around you seems to be falling apart, nothing soothes better than pure comfort food. She told me she was freezing the beer and had a few coolers to put ice in and that even if the power was out for three days, as it was with Wilma, she could have her cold beer. She even told me her address so I could come by and join her if it got to that point.

With Maegan living with me now, you would think I’d be preparing for the worst. C’mon, if you know me at all you know I’m much better at reacting than being proactive. I know my ex wife knows that I would make sure that our daughter is safe and if I really felt there was something to worry about I would take more action. I think both of us are looking at this as kind of an adventure. My brother lives close by and if he does evacuate I’m sure he’ll take Maegan with him. I can’t leave because of work.

I’m not totally dismissing the storm; we’re all watching the weather channel and are quite confident that it won’t be that bad. If we do get hit, and the power goes out, I did bring home the essentials. I’ll have my chocolate pudding, peanut butter and beer. Thanks Sara for putting this in the proper perspective.