The “Earthquake Preparedness” list has been sitting on the counter for quite some time. Years, maybe. Ages ago we did a half-assed job at chucking some cans in a plastic container…but we had things like thermal blankets and a few flashlights, etc.
It didn’t seem pressing until today.
I mean, I knew it was bad, “worst deal ever” sort of bad, but a nuclear pissing contest?
Seriously?
And because this is a possibility, it alerted me to the fact that other catastrophes are also a possibility. We’re on the fault line: the big one is right around the corner. Could be 5 days, 500 days, 50 years from now. Nobody seems to know other than they build skyscrapers in Vancouver with floating boosters (not the technical term) so they can sway and dance instead of falling down like so many glass giants. I had a friend who moved to New Zealand – she wanted to move here – but the threat of the big one kept her away. And so… they had an earthquake there. You just can’t get away from it sometimes. We all die of something, right?
The way I’ve stocked my earthquake kit, we are going to die of embarrassment.
I realized we had no clothing in the container other than a few jackets. So I packed the essentials, for all seasons. Not clothes I like to wear, or things that might even fit me, but hey, I might be skinnier, and those shiny jeans that a friend said looked good on me, when they actually gave me waffle-ass – those went right in. Ditto the pair of shorts with the faulty zipper. (I only realized this about the zipper quite recently when visiting the recycling depot. I was dropping off some cans of paint; for reasons that are too long to go into, I was just doing a quick errand, commando, and did not realize the barn door was open. Now I know why the recycling guy wouldn’t look at me. He wasn’t being rude. He was just shocked that there was a small furry mammal trying to escape the front of my pants.) Sigh. In they went, along with the free toque I got when I bought a bike, and all the mismatched pull-on gloves. Who’s going to give a shit if they match when all about us is death and destruction? Not me. I’m going to wear my mismatched gloves and scoop out the cream of corn from the can and try to convince my family that they can eat the gluten-free penne made from ancient grains that I bought by mistake. I bought lots of water – the currency of all disaster movies- and we have a creek and some water tablets. We also have enough dried fruit to make us all really unhappy when we’re sharing the same blanket.
At least people will be able to see us coming… Stella in her Pepto-Bismol inspired pink clothing, Evan in a pair of my neon sneakers bought for an 80’s party (and camo pants, so he can rock the survival-wear) and Simon in all the leftover grunge-era puffy clothing. And me, well, better to just look me in the eye. We can trade cans of salmon for whatever real food I’m actually supposed to be packing, maybe offer up some old socks for trade. And I’m thinking we need to get one of those solar panels that you plug your phone into. Not for checking to see if the world has ended, but for candy crush.
Then we’re prepared for anything.