Wild Weather

The last few days have brought us the most wild weather. I've read various reports showing our rainfall as being anywhere from 5-8.5 inches in the last two days. The wind was blowing gusts up to 50 mph and our power went out yesterday for about 7 or 8 hours. It took my son's girlfriend two hours to make the trip to work that normally takes her thirty minutes, because of a mudslide that closed the highway. All in all, it was a pretty darned excitin' day!

I pride myself on being fairly organized and prepared for whatever may come my way. I've often lectured my kids, telling them to be prepared "for when the big one hits!", and my daughter tells me every time, "We don't need to be, we'll just come to your house!"

I must say, however, that this time I wasn't so prepared. I always have a lot of food in the house, but yesterday was that quick grocery-shopping day...you know, where you need milk, bread, eggs, juice and a Diet Coke? All the stuff, well, maybe minus the DC, that people RUN to the store for when there's a looming power outage? Those people that I laugh and scoff at because I am ALWAYS ready for an emergency? Yea, well, I became one of them. Pitiful.

I DID have gas in my car. We always have water...there's a hot tub and a lake...both of which can be used to flush the toilets with...plus a hot water tank and a cold water holding tank, so water isn't an issue, and I always have at least a gallon of drinking water. I have cash, in the form of a jar I collect change in, and we can cook on the bbq. That is, when we have enough propane, which we were almost out of yesterday. We are also out of propane and firewood for our fireplaces, which left the house a bit chilly when the sun went down.

So, when the PUD originally said our power would be out for two days, I got a little frustrated with myself for my lack of planning, still I knew we would be fine. This wasn't a major emergency, and besides, our office had power and so did my daughter's house. BUT, if we did have a major earthquake or other disaster and didn't have power for a long time, things may have been quite different. I guess it was a good lesson learned.