Oh Sandy...

Well, it's Sunday night.  The latest possible moment the Weather.com guys say is safe to get what you need before Sandy hits (although from what I've seen, North Carolina is already taking a beating and it's really not supposed to hit here until tomorrow evening, but I digress).  Do you have what you need?  Do you think it will meet all the hype?  As you know, I'm in western PA.  We're right on the cusp of the track of Sandy.  According to Weather.com, we're also in the "likely" area for power outages.  I haven't lived here long enough to ascertain if I should really be worried or not, but erring on the side of caution, I bought some water and shelf stable foods, made sure we had batteries for our lantern and busted out our candle stash (and I must say, if the power does go out, our house is going to smell really nice!).  I've also got a load of warm clothes in the wash with a couple of blankets to follow.  We're as ready as we're going to be, I guess.

Do you remember back in 2003 when a power surge hit a New York power grid and caused that huge blackout across the Northeast?  Yeah, my husband and I lived in Detroit at the time and my mother-in-law and brother-in-law were in town for the weekend.  We were actually having an early dinner at the mall when everything went dark.  We couldn't prepare for that blackout, but we somehow made it through.  Lots of PB&Js.  And I think we went 27 hours without power.

Being unprepared for no power is not something I want to do again.  So when I hear it's "likely" we'll loose power, yes, I'm going to get a few things, especially now that we have kids.  Even when my husband, raised from 6 weeks old in the Tidewater area of Virginia, says everyone is worrying over nothing, that it will fizzle, that nothing is going to happen, I would rather be one of those who goes to the store to stock up on things than get caught with nothing.  I picked him and our son up from their soccer game yesterday, and my husband opens the trunk to find a 3 gallon pack of water and he looks at me with this look of "Um...what the heck is that for?" and I told him that I "pre-panicked" to beat the crowd.  Go me.

Stay safe, stay warm and stay dry.  I'll talk with you after the storm!