This week was a test - and I failed ⚡😬
Hi!
If there’s one thing I’ve been fixated on for the last couple of years, it’s prepping.
I still have all my usual interests - long nature walks, movies that came out before Blu-Ray was a thing, lewd drawings of women with juicy rumps.
But these days, nothing preoccupies me quite like emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency.
And I really wish I had more to show for it. Because I’ve been prepping for a while, but I’ve been doing it on a tight budget.
That means I don’t have a basement stocked to the ceiling with six months’ worth of supplies. Best I can do is a bag of powdered milk and lots of dry beans.
I don’t have go-bags at every door. If shit hits the fan, I’m running out with whatever happens to be in my purse. Somehow, we’ll have to make do with hand sanitizer, gum, and KN95 masks in a few fun colors.
And if something contaminates the water supply, I guess I’m fucked. I don’t have any of those LifeStraws preppers love, so I won’t be able to sustain myself on puddle water.
Instead, I’ve had to focus all my efforts on what I can do - learning how to grow food, stocking up on the very basics, and having anxiety about societal collapse.
I wish I was the kind of prepper who’s ready for anything and everything. But I’m more of a prepper in the sense that I’m bracing myself for the apocalypse and hoping it doesn’t hit me too hard.
I really felt that this week. Because we lost power to the house for 26 hours and I learned that I’m not nearly ready enough.
It happened in the early afternoon, and it wasn’t too bad at first.
We already had food on the table, so it didn’t interfere with supper. The kids played outside while I gathered all my battery-powered candles and placed them throughout the house. Mr. Austin took out his emergency flashlight and crank radio, just in case we’d need them.
We managed to put together a few snacks that didn’t require the toaster or the stove, gathered a few extra blankets for the kids so they’d be warm enough overnight, and started some broccoli seedlings we’d been putting off.
After that, all we could really do was enjoy the cozy atmosphere.
Dim lights. The house as quiet as can be. Hushed conversations in bed.
It might’ve even been kind of sexy. But I found out the pint of ice cream in my mini fridge had fully thawed, so I was too bummed out to get in that mindset.
RIP Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Jammin’ - I bet you would’ve been really tasty.
But all in all, it wasn’t too bad.
Except that we still had no electricity the next morning. And that’s when I really took stock of how screwed we’d be if this went on for too long.
All the perishable food in the fridge had to get tossed. And we were quickly running out of things that didn’t have to be cooked.
My supply of batteries was embarrassingly low. That’s a major prepper fail.
We don’t have a generator. Not a single solar power bank. Nothing to supply us with power when the grid won’t.
Forget the apocalypse, I can’t even manage a downed power line that doesn’t get fixed fast enough.
We made the best of it, though.
We loaded the kids into the car and drove down to the shore to watch the waves. I sent Mr. Austin into a store the next town over so he could grab as many AA’s as he could carry. And when we got back home, he recaulked the bathtub because that boy needs to keep his hands busy at all times.
In the evening, the lights flashed on and everything went back to normal.
The kids locked in on their devices. Mr. Austin caught up on some of the work he missed. And I went back to worrying about the end of the world.
Because the power has already gone out twice since we moved last month. So I have a strong suspicion it might happen again sometime this winter. When it does, I want to be ready - and I’m not sure I will be. I’ll do everything I can in the meantime, but I’m not sure I’ll get very far.
There’s this common piece of advice that circulates online - never tell anyone you’re a prepper. Because if everyone knows you’ve been planning, they’ll be rushing to your place as soon as chaos breaks out.
And I guess I’m violating that rule by telling you all this.
It doesn’t really matter, though. Because I don’t have a shed full of ammo and intimidating knives. I don’t have enough canned beans to feed a militia. All I have is random emergency tips locked in my noggin, some lettuce growing in my living room, and a fuckton of batteries for my electric candles.
So when everything goes to hell, you should probably go knocking on someone else’s door.
Love,
Emma ❤
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