Saving the day

My day did not get off to a great start. To make a long story short, it will suffice to say that I experienced my first issue around 5 am, and by 9 am I found myself sitting in our garage in my car – which refused to start. After ringing three different neighbor’s bells (and hearing each of them move inside their home but refuse to answer their door [I even made eye contact with one of their children, smiled, and motioned to the door – and she promptly turned her back on me and walked away]), I gave up and called AAA. I was told that assistance would arrive in 15-20 minutes – but it was 9:50 am before the technician arrived. Mercifully the car’s issue was just a low battery (as I had suspected), so the fix was fast and easy; the downside was that I had to drive for 30 minutes in order to safely recharge the battery, and freeway driving was preferred.

Sigh. I had planned on making a quick trip to get groceries (which is a mere 5 minute jaunt using neighborhood roads), so it looked like that plan was going to be delayed. I backed out of our driveway and approached the main road. Instead of turning left towards the store, I turned right towards the interstate – and two minutes later, was headed west to nowhere.

As I racked my brain trying to think of a productive use of this time (and gasoline), I remembered a camping store that I had been wanting to check out. Ever since I attended the city sampler and received a gentle nudge by a friendly public employee to please assemble an emergency kit, I have felt a tiny bit uneasy about our family’s profound lack of preparedeness should a disaster occur. The camping store sells dehydrated food, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some and start building the kit in earnest.

Momentarily stopping my car (but still keeping the engine running), I texted my sweetie:
1) to vent,
2) to let him know what was going on, and
3) to see if he thought my buying some shelf-stable, long-lasting dehydrated food was a good idea.

Here is our text exchange:
Me: Car is running. Battery read as low (semi-drained). Tech says should be fine. *sigh*
Him: Take the freeway if you can. Should help recharge the battery. Hugs.
Me: To camping store for food bucket?
Him: Sure. Everyone prepares for the zombie apocalypse in different ways. 🙂

When I saw that last message come through, I literally laughed out loud. In our relationship, I am the one who plans, prepares, and occasionally obsesses; my sweetie is the one who pauses, tempers, and occasionally slacks. He thinks my desire to prepare for catastrophe is unnecessary – but also prudent. So while he likes to give me crap about, oh, buying an 8-lb bucket of food containing 60 vegetarian servings of meals that has a 25-year shelf life, he does so in humorous, creative, and loving ways.

Once again, my sweetie brought a dose of levity and lightness to my heading-downhill day. And should the un-dead ever gain control of the Earth, I will have done my part to help us survive. 😉

This food bucket helps a person prepare not only for natural or unnatural disasters (i.e., zombies), but also job loss, illness, food shortage, and other emergency situations. Heckuva deal! 😉

Stef