Dodged the Bullet

Last week we dodged a bullet.

Hurricane Matthew was scheduled to come within just a few miles of our coast as a very powerful Category 4 Hurricane.

The reactions of the locals ranged from “the sky is falling, run for your lives” to “it’s nothing”. Thankfully our prepper skills came in handy.  Since we plan early for hurricane season we didn’t have to deal with the madness of Walmart, Home Depot, etc. We live in a mandatory evacuation zone due to my front door being less than 1,000 feet from the river. Normally I would be mandated to work at a local shelter but my son was sick and contagious and thus unable to be in the shelter childcare.

I have a bug out bag with essentials so packing wasn’t too difficult and the only stress for us what where/when to evacuate. I did have an internal struggle between wanting to bring everything that I didn’t want destroyed in the storm vs. bringing just what we need to get through the storm. In the end I compromised, I brought our textbooks and curriculum as I would have hated to see them destroyed and just tried to protect the rest of the items from water if the house flooded.

We lucked out with a decent rate at a local hotel thanks to a homeschooling association discount so we didn’t have to go far. During this process my children learned a lot about the weather, hurricanes, weather forecasting, trajectory tracking and more. So while we haven’t cracked open a book in days, learning has been a continuous process.

In the end the hurricane made an unexpected wobble in it’s trajectory at the last minute that had it passing further away from the coast. We still had a sleepless night listening to the howling wind but were blessed to get through it unscathed and still having a home to come back to. Not everybody was so fortunate, that could have been us.

Now I am trying to get back to some semblance of normal, difficult as our household is in flux due to uncertainties about an upcoming move. I used to be a gypsy but lost those skills. The stress has impacted routines and affected our immune systems, we tend to be fairly healthy but not this month. For the first time ever everybody in the house is sick at the same time, that is not very conducive to productivity.

I am supposed to be packing but I am writing this instead because I didn’t want to leave you hanging. There it will be a while longer before I can get back to a semi-normal writing schedule but I hope to be able to pipe in as I am able. Meanwhile I’ll be posting on Facebook…