still here

I'm still here everyone... totally pregnant! Love it!

On Sunday, about 300,000 people across Ohio lost their electricity. Ours went out at around 5pm and was off for about 24 hours. At the time, the electric company was saying the power could be out upwards of 7 days! Man am I grateful that wasn't the case, although there are still several without power. I was about to kill someone because the A/C stopped working and I don't own a single battery operated fan. Within the hour of losing the electricity I started sweating and don't think I really ever stopped... awful awful. I made Joe go down into the basement with a lighter and try to find the box of candles. He finally found them and then we realized that since they had all been put on a candle warmer, the wick was sunk to the bottom and therefore useless. Oh, and we don't own a flashlight. Way to be prepared!!

All the stuff in our fridge is in the iffy stage right now -- is it safe to eat? Everything in there was room temp when we woke up this morning. Everything in the freezer was halfway thawed or just about at room temp. So we went to McDonald's for breakfast and the line for the drive-thru was out onto the street and the line inside was wrapped all the way around the restaurant and out the door. Wal-mart, Lowe's, Target, and the like were out of size C and D batteries well before 10am, as well as ice and water bottles. People were running into the store like chickens with their heads cut off trying to find a generator and the lines for gas were beyond ridiculous. There was also a line outside of Costco at 8am (they open at 10am) -- people waiting to get in and stock up on absolutely everything they deemed necessary. They sold their entire stock of generators in a matter of hours, totaling $22,000. All of the stores that still had power had people prowling around looking for outlets to plug in their laptops and cell phones (Joe and I found ourselves at Panera Bread, along with about 200 other people, trying to find a precious power source for our phones). This truly was a wake up call for Joe and me; we don't have really anything in terms of being prepared for something like this. Once all of this mayhem settles a little, I'm going to start stocking up on some emergency essentials -- like a flashlight. Seriously, who doesn't own a flashlight?? I should be embarrassed :( Although I did go to the dollar store and bought some AWESOME glow sticks. They provide light AND entertainment -- emergency essential indeed. Sometime around 9pm Sunday, Joe and I realized that we were way beyond bored -- no TV, no internet, no lights, no fun. Luckily Joe found a deck of cards and we played 3's Wild by candlelight. How romantic! Anyway, I bring this up solely to inform everyone that some form of entertainment needs to be in your preparedness kits, especially if you have kids.

Our electricity problems are in no way comparable to those suffering far worse tragedies right now, but seeing the way that people react in a simple power outage really opened my eyes as to how awful it would be in a real disaster. I've always found it hard to spend money on food storage and other emergency things because our family is so small, as is our budget, but small things, like batteries and a flashlight, are a great way to start!! I think I'm going to buy some candy corn and chocolate chips to put in my food storage. I feel they would be a great bargaining tool in a crisis :)