Chaos

I received the ok from BoySmile to do hurricane preparations without him laughing at me. I've never been in a hurricane before so I don't know when is the time to panic and when is the time to brush it off. Apparently NOW is the time to panic. Well, maybe not so much.

The world surrounding where I live is Chaos today. I thought I would run by the grocery store on my way home from dropping the kid off at school to pick up '4 gallons of water' as that was what I was okayed to do. :) I thought, "In and out and off to my run. Easy." The parking lot was FULL. I parked on the outskirts of the store and proceeded inside noting to myself that an awful lot of people were doing their grocery shopping at 8 a.m. this morning.

Inside the store there were people everywhere. All I wanted was water. I found the water isle and...empty...except for one half case of bottled water that looked like it had been ravaged by wild animals...or people desperate for water. I thought, "Uh oh, this doesn't look good." Then I got to the end of the isle and they had a spring water machine where you fill up your own containers of water. The line was reaching around two other isles. "I'm not standing in that line. That's ridiculous." I thought inside my head. Finally, I found pallet of cases of bottled water, grabbed one and was ready to leave.

As I was navigating my way out of the store I realized that I was the only person with a cart that was not heaping full of food, paper towels (for flood clean up? I can't figure that one out), toilet paper, dog food, canned goods, etc. I started wondering if I should be more worried and buying more supplies. I decided to go down most of the isles of the store (much like our Fiesta trip trigirl82, but much briefer and crowded) to see if anything jumped out to me as an item that I should buy for a hurricane. What I ended up was is this: One box of Reduced fat Wheat Thins, one six pack of Propel water, and a box of rice chex and corn chex to make party mix. I couldn't find anything to 'prepare' more for a hurricane. I'm not sure why people were so frantic in there. Have they not bought groceries for a month? Perhaps they don't go to Costco like we do. That's probably what was going on. Either way, I left the store with the least amount of groceries of anyone in there. I have never seen so many empty shelves in a store before. Literally all of the bread and baked items were gone, the drink isle was empty, the canned food isle was empty. It was eerily empty. I felt like I should be more panicked than I was, but all I could think about was making cookies and party mix. If I'm going to be flooded in, I want some cookies to eat. Shoot.

The story is the same for finding gas in this town too. I thought I would obey the freeway signs that say to keep your gas tank full, and top off my tank on the way home. I pulled into the gas station and every pump is full of course. There are cars waiting everywhere just to get gas. One guy who had a huge Texas truck (that's like a redneck truck, except it's nice and expensive looking) not only filled his tank, but then proceeded to fill five gas containers afterwards. With my lack of patience that I have, I drove out of the gas station without filling up. "I'm not waiting for that." I thought, "That's ridiculous." (Do you see a pattern? Hmm.. Maybe I will regret this later when I'm evacuating and run out of gas and water on the freeway.)

In the end, we are going to stick it out. Some people are evacuating, but BoySmile is 'excited to be in a natural disaster' and I just want to get it over with and make sure we are going to be okay. If I didn't have a kid I would be more excited. I don't want anything to happen to her is all. And I don't like how the news tells us, 'You can evacuate, but if you don't there will be a point in the storm where you are on your own. No hospitals, no police, no drugs, electricity, etc.' That's a recipe for crime if I ever saw one.

The consolation that I received today, was when I went to the office to pick up a package and I asked the vivacious ladies in there if it will end up flooding here. They replied, "Yes." and "It's definitely coming." However, they were very relaxed about it like this is normal life (I don't get it) and that there isn't much to worry about. They are staying put and calm, so I will follow suit. The good news is that BoySmile doesn't have to go to work tomorrow! The bad news is that they canceled the Homecoming football game. :( Too bad. That was quite entertaining last time. Very intense for high school football. That's all I'm gonna say.

Oh yeah, and I had an interview tomorrow and now this hurricane canceled that too. I'm destined to never work again. *drama*

Good thing we have Uno. They say it's good to play games during the storm because it gives you something to do. I'm champion at Uno. It's on this weekend with my party mix and cookies. Don't you wish you were here?

As a bonus picture, look at this. This guy got chafed in humidity. Gross huh? I think he ran 100 miles though. We're just doing half of that. Half of that chafing. Nice.