Yesterday we got hit full force with the remnants of the Ida storm (not that we knew what it was at the time) and it was nas-tay, blowing a gale and pouring rain. While accompanying the dog on her potty break, I found our nearly empty trashcan in the middle of the yard and naively put it back in its unsecured location by the steps. It must be floating in the Chesapeake Bay by now because I haven’t seen it in over 24 hours. Our chickens got absolutely soaked. Feathers matted together and drooping, they huddled under their overhang because they wanted to come outside, but didn’t want to come outside. And Lucy the duck quietly napped in her pool, beak tucked under her wing even as her feathers were ruthlessly ruffled by the wind.
I know it doesn't look like it, but really, there is feather ruffling going on here.
The night before that, the heat went out with the power and I spent a chilly morning bundled up until someone finally came to fix it around noon. After that I took a shower to thaw out (if only we had a tub big enough for a bath—wistful sigh.) When I pulled the curtain back to grab my towel, the wind shook our little tin can trailer so hard I thought that maybe I’d had the water on too hot again and was getting a little dizzy. The power went out again last night—after we’d already had one power outage, mind you, and had done nothing in the way of preparation— and we decided that what with all the candlelight it was a great time to mess around.
He went to brush his teeth (you know, foreplay) and discovered that we had no water. At all. Not only did we not have drinking water, a necessity after much gasping and moaning, but—much, much worse—no twat washing water. Now, I can drink chocolate soy milk to quench my thirst afterwards, but my sweet Papaya can’t. And I’ve had too many cases of “honeymoon disease” to let that go.
And this is when it finally hit me what oblivious dumbasses we are. We never adequately prepare for this stuff or even know that a storm is coming because we don’t have cable or digital television or whatever it is the kids are watching these days, nor do we listen to local radio. So while everyone else is frantically clearing out the milk and bread aisles at Food Lion, we’re sitting at home chatting over tea and wondering if the nice sunny weather we’re currently having will hold for the weekend so we can get some work done in the garden without actually consulting that newfangled thing the internet to get a clue.
You’d think my Love would be a little less blasé about this stuff since he lived through a few scary weather events in Cuba. One of them, a hurricane that blew through when he was a teenager, completely ripped the Spanish tile roof off his house so that he had to run around throwing mattresses over his grandmother and mother to protect them from flying debris.
You would think. But just in case the Great Twat Water Catastrophe doesn’t amply illustrate this, here is another example of how you would be wrong. This summer, prior to hurricane season, our local emergency service conducted a trial run of their supply distribution system. They asked the public to drive up to the local high school where they would hand over a box of emergency items (including bottled water) that were yours to keep. Perhaps in case there was a real emergency? And maybe this would have been a good opportunity to come up with some sort of plan, or at least awareness? But all that we really took away from the exercise was some mini cans of Pringles and rubbery lemon pudding that should last well beyond the supposed 2012 End Times.
Cuban that he is, though, he’s been eating his way through those boxes of indestructible foodstuffs like a trouper, because the whole point of the exercise for him? FREE FOOD. If Castro had given out extra rations in exchange for political rally attendance, I do believe my Love might actually have marched to the Plaza de la Revolución semi-willingly.
Clearly, when the apocalypse does come, we will be screwed.
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