ALWAYS GETTING READY

We have always known that Lula is alive only because modern medicine and equipment have been able to connect the dots between otherwise fatal weaknesses, but you don't really contemplate that every day. I try not to get too philosophical about how artificially she is being kept alive because without modern science and electricity most of us would have succumbed to tuberculosis or falling down a dark stairway.

The impending doom predicted to arrive with Hurricane Irene has left us strangely unpanicked, but we felt a definite need to prepare. The biggest question was whether to buy or not to buy a back-up battery to keep Lula's various medical devices juiced, which we did in the end. The feeding pump we are not too worried about because we can rig up a gravity feed. In a pinch we could use one of the oxygen tanks to administer her nebulizer treatments. We couldn't check her O2 saturation but when in doubt we could give her some O2 to be safe (our pre-kids selves are totally smirking at the over zealousness of our post-kids selves, btw).

Our biggest asset in this stormy situation is, frankly, Sam. Sam is the man whom you definitely want to be with during a natural disaster. All those Wall Street investment banker types are of no use when the shit really hits the fan. Being a carpenter he's incredibly handy and being a Scotsman he's used to battling unspeakably crappy weather. He grew up in the country and spent lots of time on farms where things are generally rigged and adapted, and his dad was a Commander in the Navy so he can tie all sorts of fancy knots and stuff. By the time I got home he had taken in all the garden furniture, rigged up a rain barrier in case the door to the back yard floods, and parked the car directly in front of our house so we can run an extension chord from the car to the apartment if we run out of power. Since I did my Costco run last week we can happily subsist on baked beans and paper towels for weeks. This is probably why we make a good team and also get on each others nerves; I'm good at planning and Sam's good at adapting.

I also reserved a car service to pick up our night nurse tomorrow in hopes that even if the trains are shut it will be safe enough to get here by car. Last winter during a massive blizzard our poor misguided night nurse spent an entire night stuck on a bus adrift in a snowbank. She was only about 10 blocks from our house but she was from Trinidad and not used to snow. Sam had to stay up with Lula while Kathleen shared one apple with a handful of other people who were frozen like Popsicles to their seats on the B38. Ironically Sam and I had actually walked about the same distance to a movie just for fun that same night! This made me realize that A) some people don't find bad weather fun in the slightest and B) people will sit and wait for a situation to change of it's own accord for much longer than makes any sense. I am hoping my initiative will pay off and we will have a nurse tomorrow night.

I also really hope you all are reading this from high grounds. If not, get packing! Get moving! Stay safe! Be dry!