Post Sandy

Hi all. Thank you so much for your kind words and messages over the last week. I'm happy to report that as of early Saturday morning, power was restored to our building after 5 days in the dark. I consider us to be so incredibly lucky. Our families are all safe and sound with minimal home destruction.

Before we start with the recap and depressing stuff, can we take a moment for the fact that we bypassed Halloween? On the Saturday before the storm, Shaun and I celebrated Halloween at our building's annual Chiller Halloween party!

We went as Frankenstein and his {knocked up} Bride! Though being pregnant means generally being a little more uncomfortable and no alcohol to boot, I'm glad that we still got dressed up in costume and had a fun night with our neighbors. Not to mention that while being cooped up for 5 days, I'm fairly certain that I single-handedly consumed about 3 lbs. of various Halloween candy including Twix bars, Milky Ways, Snickers and 3 Musketeers. Sigh.

I'm not going to lie to you...the last week was a trying one. It was easy to complain about living in the dark (as it is, our apartment does not get much natural light), having to toss all of the contents of our refrigerator and freezer, not being able to take a hot shower, having to boil all water before using it...but at least we still had our home. As we were seeing more and more footage of the destruction left in Sandy's path, well...it's downright heartbreaking. And anytime I got frustrated with a few minor hardships, cabin fever or needing a flashlight to go to the bathroom...I stopped right in my tracks and thanked the universe for all that I have. 

Luckily our building had a generator and we were able to charge our phones a couple times a day and catch some of the news footage post-storm. We went for a lot of walks, drank a lot of decaf tea, played a whole lotta Boggle and went to sleep at 9pm each night. All in all, not a terrible week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's to sunny days ahead...

Being Unprepared for a Hurricane

Hi friends! It's Monday! I'm ready for a good week...how about you?

This weekend was a crazy one. Hurricane Irene blasted the East coast in a terrifying, crazy, harrowing storm.

Luckily, Shaun and I were safely tucked away at his brother Steven's wedding in Wilmington, Delaware. Though DE got hit, the hotel was like a bunker...so we were pretty safe for Saturday and Sunday.

But when we arrived home, it was clear that we were beyond unprepared for the storm. While we were lucky enough to not have any damage to our condo or experience flooding on our drive home, our building had lost power and we were told that it could be a week (week!) before it returned.

Why I felt unprepared:

I only had a smattering of scented candles on hand, instead of a real back-up lighting source. I thought this would be enough for any possible emergency. Oh how wrong and naive I was. Not only was this not enough, it was not even close to what we'd need, lighting-wise. Once the darkness fell, we realized that it would be much more beneficial to have large pillared, unscented candles to get us through. And what we really wanted was an oil lamp.

Lack of batteries. We have a really nice flashlight...but it's only one flashlight. And we only had one set of batteries for said flashlight. Not great if you're stuck for a few days and all of your stores are sold out of batteries.

We only had two gallons of water on hand. Though we didn't lose water, it was highly possible that we could have. And then we really would have been screwed. Two gallons would get us very far if we were without water for more than a day or two.

I had no ice. We have a cooler on our terrace, which we thought would be great to use for some cold goods. But ice was in seriously short supply. In hindsight, it would really be great to have a big bag of ice in the fridge at all times.

We had limited cash. This really wasn't an issue, but it easily could have been. I never keep cash on hand, but it might not be a bad idea to have a small stash of it for emergencies.

Food. Luckily, I usually keep canned goods and plenty of food on hand, but it was clear that I had little in the way of emergency-ready goods. We had use of the stove, but if we had not, it would have been a tough one. Canned goods, energy bars, nut butters, and frozen bread probably would do the trick.

So with all of this in mind, I felt a little scattered and overall unprepared for such an event. Luckily, our power came back on late last night. I'm now planning to create a full-blown emergency kit should another disaster strike. I'll be sure to keep you posted on my ideas and how I get it done!

Questions of the Day:

How prepared are you for an emergency?

What's in your emergency kit? Or what would you put in your kit?

psst...I'm blogging about my bro-in-law's hurricane wedding over on The Peach & The Pit...hope you'll check it out!