I have just returned from my second emergency preparedness expedition. I had bought a new flashlight and 8-hour dripless candles and some more water and boiled up eggs and did the laundry the other day. Eileen, at a local family-owned hardware store, took me round the shop personally. We told many stories along the way: city vs. country living. Her husband still commutes. And she was very reassuring. But I had realized that all my electronic devices—yikes—all of them would be shut down if there is an outage unless they were juiced-up, not to mention our electric stove, the water pumps for the two wells on the property and so on. So, this morning, a second expedition. I needed to get more bananas, some humuus, etc. etc. and to gas-up along the way. (Thank you for the reminder about the gas, dear city friend.) I folded in a quick work-out as the gym will close early today and probably not reopen until late Monday! Okay, good, done that. Now I'll go for a walk on the River to Ridge Trail to store up some fresh air. I hate being stuck in. Temps are predicted to drop on Sunday night to the single digits and below. No heat if we have a power outage, much less walks! My daughter and son-in-law, who live thirty minutes away in the mountains, wrote to say they'd come down in the truck to rescue us, if necessary. They have a wood stove and two cuddly huge dogs for warmth.
All set, right?
Writers are both blessed and cursed with vivid imaginations—we project, we say "what if?" to get our stories going, we obsess about first drafts and the sentences that surface in our over-active brains as we wake in the morning, or, if we are writing nonfiction, about the questions we will ask if we are interviewing someone that day. We try to get our thoughts down and feel relieved when they make sense. Live in the moment? You must be kidding me. I've got the add-on of refugee PTSD panic, escape from a war zone embedded in my psyche, and the necessity—to feel safe—of preparing for all eventualities. I remember the day when my California-born, laconic husband noticed this about me. I had never told him and don't parade it around much even today except in therapy sessions; now here I am writing about it. Why should I be embarrassed? Why is this characteristic a negative when I am able, thankfully, to use it in my work? Rhetorical questions. I'm writing this blog post. I'm ready for the storm.