A little bit of Panic

The area that we used to live in, just twenty something miles away was evacuated this morning, but we’ve been told to “shelter in place,” so unless there’s some other mandate, we’re sticking around.  When Allison was here 7 years ago our home was safe (we know the woman who lived here at the time) so that’s somewhat comforting.

Little Aiden is sick with a head cold.  He’s not doing to well with that, I don’t want to consider cramming him (and the rest of us) in the car for a long evacuation.  So gratefully we’re hopefully not doing that.

We were already well stocked and ready, but I went to the grocery store this morning to pick up just a few more things, a long burning fire log, another giant bag of charcoal, and a bunch of crackers, cereal, bread, and three more cases of water, so we’re set for our little hurricane party.

The store was a giant mess, I usually stop there a couple times a month on the way home from dropping of Michael and Kevin, and I usually have the store basically to myself, NOT TODAY.  It was a mad house.

There were no carts, think about trying to drag along a grumpy toddler and a baby in a bucket car seat while gathering up groceries…  I was able to flag down some man who didn’t have much in his cart on the way out and take his cart.  I’m glad he was willing to give it to me.

I found Breaking Dawn, for $13!  One good thing, if we loose electricity I have one way to escape, LOL!

I gathered up my things and got in a VERY long line.  At one point a woman started yelling about that she wasn’t panicking.  Um, yes mam.  A few minutes later the manager opened up a new check out line, and all hysteria broke loose as two women squabbled over who was supposed to go.  Ultimately one walked away embarrassed and one marched up prideful as I’ve ever seen a woman.  Hysteria brings out such weirdness in people.  People are getting very rude…

The lady who bagged my groceries got me another cart (so that I didn’t have to bury Joey in the new groceries), that was nice, and helped me out to my car, I insisted that she go back in, and she insisted that she help me load my car.  That was really sweet.  On the way out some exuberant lady almost backed up into me and the boys though!  I haven’t screamed “STOP!!” that loud in a while.

People are getting more grouchy as they drive, I heard at least a few more than normal horns on the way home…  One more reason not to evacuate, 20 plus hours on the freeway with a bunch of grouchy panicky people isn’t my idea of an adventure, at least one I’m not excited to dive into.

We’re considering going up to a friends house that’s a bit more inland for the actual storm, but we’ll see.

I’m gathering things just in case we change our minds though.  Kevin gets off work today at the same time as Michael’s school gets out, so I’ll be picking them both up in one trip.  And they both have tomorrow off, so maybe this is just an exciting three day weekend.

All in all, I realize everything I have is just stuff.  It’s nice to have stuff, but if it’s all gone, all that matters is family.  Well and pictures. 😉  I’m sure I don’t really need to worry about that, but it’s good to keep in mind when I get too worried.  We’ll take good care of ours.

If you’d like to track the storm, here’s some links.

Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5993388.html

National Hurricane Center
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml

Weather.com
http://www.weather.com/

I’ll keep things updated as I can.  If you don’t hear from me Saturday and have my cell number feel free to call after trying my home number.  If you can’t get ahold of me check Peggy or Sara’s blog in my links, they may have updates.