What do you grab when you feel the shadow of doom peering over your shoulder? When I say impending doom I mean blizzard, wind storm of unusual speed, hurricane, flood predictions, you know the things we have advanced warning for by our local weather people.The people that love to fill us with a never before known sense of urgency.
Do you run for your nearest grocery store and knock over feeble and slow(er) shoppers to grab the last loaf of lite bread and dented water bottles? Do you say the hell with water, where are the cheesy doodles?
Do you run for the duct tape and plastic rolls and make plans to seal the up all air leaks?
Do you speed in the other direction past the grocery getters and head for the liquor store because "this could be a long one" and "There ain't enough liquor for this much snow" ? What do you do???
My family is like a log full of chipmunks! Mention "impending doom" or say "time to prep for the storm" and we scatter like squirrels with firecrackers taped to our butts. Yes, we grab our nuts and run! Then grab more nuts and store them and more and more...We measure water. We order water... this is where I should remind all you reading this that we live on a mountain and have to have our water hauled in at great expense, now back to the prep...we bottle water. Any empty milk jug or juice bottle will soon be washed and filled for the chance that the power is out and the water pump is not working. We run to the woods and cut wood, gather dry kindling, stack and cover. Then it is off to the grocery store to carry jug after jug of milk to checkout. (very important! The jugs will hold more water when empty) and don't forget the dry gas! Dry gas is very important so that we can make sure our little generator will run and we can watch the news, because nothing and I do mean NOTHING is more fun then watching the Impending Doom creep up on you from behind by way of the weather channel....
...OK admit it! It is a little like watching a horror movie and you are the star, but this time you are so well prepped that you think that you can rewrite the ending, jump out at the insane ax murderer (Impending Doom)and send him running and screaming into the night.
Why do we feel like this?
Because we have been caught too many times unprepared and have sworn it won't happen again! We feel empowered by the extra loaf of bread, the extra jug of milk, the extra bottle of booze! We love to sit snug in our cozy logs chocked full of nuts feeling safe and prepared for the worse. It is a dreadful feeling to not be prepared! It is glorious to be prepared! We feel as if only Impending Doom will look at us, standing strong before it with gleaming rolls of duct tape and plastic wrap hanging from our belts, pantries stocked full and plastic water bottles piled high behind us, impending doom will whimper, crawl away defeated and swear not to try that again! We will chuckle with hands on hips and scorn it back into the dark shadows. We grab our nuts and fill our pantries with them and by doing this we defeat Impending Doom! Or we think we do!
Like the prepper in the liquor store says "Sometimes there is just not enough
liquor prepping for this much snow! Or enough water...
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| Lakota Jean Pierre Bondurant playing in the snow before melt down |
This picture is from 2011 when we had really prepped hard for the coming blizzard. But 3 weeks into being marooned on the mountain with no water truck able to make it up we started gathering snow and melting it on the cookstove. We did that for another 3 weeks before clean snow was getting too hard to find or far to carry. The cistern was dipped out and siphoned until we could not get more. Our plastic bottle long empty lay scattered and dusty.
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| The back down spout. We ran hot water to the front spout with a pipe to cistern |
We had the melt from the roof to hold us over, but dang! ..This would be a good time to warn you what a slippery slope fighting the demon of Impending Doom can be. Fighting Impending Doom can lead us to a road of insanity!... The down pipe froze and and the power went out. We would not be defeated! Would NOT I tell you! We squirrels gathered and soon had a plan to gather more nuts! We hung out the window with a piece of PVC trying to pour precious amounts of hot water heated from the cookstove to melt the clog so we could again have water. While hanging out the window a power worker walks up the long mountain road to check the lines. Joy filled our hearts! There was hope! There was still life in the world beyond and they had come to rescue us!
"Oh thank God!" my husband exclaimed.
"I know" I jumped up and down with excitement. "We will have lights again and the oven will work and ..." He cut me off in mid sentence "Oh the hell with that! If he gets the power back on we can use the hairdryer to unclog the gutter! We'll show this damn blizzard who who gets the last word then!"
Tell me what you do when Impending Doom is coming. Leave a comment below if you can, I know sometimes this Blogspot does not let you leave a comment but try. TRY! Impending Doom will not catch us off guard again!
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