Alive in the storm(ish)

I'm alive and well, if any of you were wondering.  And because it's a note-worthy day I'm just going to free write a few things on my mind.

 I'm pretty sure this is a combination of being a Carolinian raised by a Floridian, but I rather like tropical storms. I know there's danger and I'm truly sorry for the people who experience destruction of any sort (especially death). I also hope that nothing terrible happens to us, but right now I'm enjoying my day in and hoping that school gets canceled tomorrow too (definitely canceled today--but I don't teach on Monday). I'm also glad that I'm in Boston and not further south (might change my mind before this over, but that's how I feel now).

My roommate thinks I'm crazy, but it feels exciting to me. I mean--there's even confetti!! The colored leaves are blowing all over the place and they're really gorgeous.  I am a little sad the storm is taking our leaves so much more quickly than they would've gone otherwise, but since it is, I'll enjoy it.

Speaking of which, I'm enjoying the fact that the strongest part of this storm is happening right in the middle of the day. Most of the hurricanes/tropical storms from my growing up happened at night (at least the strongest part) and I missed a lot of the beauty. So it's fun to see, even if it's quite weak compared to actually being in the storm.

My biggest concern about our well-being is that we'll lose power and it won't come back before we feel like snow women (lows are only in the 40s, so we won't actually freeze, but that's still pretty chilly--and decreases what you feel like doing (right now we're all very productive but if we have to bundled up--what then?)). This has always been a big concern of mine about living in modern houses/apartments & living in towns. Growing up we had fireplaces and such (whether as main source or auxiliary) , so if power went out we still had warmth and some kind of cooked food. Ever since going to BYU, the lack of non-electric heating has worried me. When I have my own house, I will rectify this. But now I just hope for the past (and in this case feel grateful that it won't be freezing). The one thing that makes me feel a little better is that I do live in town (this is the flip side of town limiting my fuel sources). If power goes out we'll probably get a lot faster than we did in rural areas.
Second to heat, I fear my freezer being out for a long time. Especially since it won't get down to freezing. (ha!) Fortunately, I don't have a large freezer so wouldn't lose too much. But I preserved a lot of things this summer and hope they survive. (My creations, I feel attached--probably too much.) Another thing for my future--when I finally arrive at the point where I can have a deep freeze (of any size), I will also have a generator. I'm well acquainted with defrosted deep freezes and it is not a pretty thing. Oh, the memories (just imagine: heat + pounds and pounds of food).

I also hope my garden survives this. It's still thriving out there. Blossoms (that probably won't become fruit--but still, they indicate how happy my plants are) and lots of fruit. I went out this morning and took down all the cages so that my tomatoes wouldn't be whipped around by the wind. The vines are now all on the ground, but flooding might still hurt them. And my peppers are free standing, so I don't know how they'll do. If I got nothing else out of my garden, it would have been a wonderful success. But STILL, those are my babies and I want them to be okay.

I'm grateful to have an emergency preparedness kit--mostly for the flashlight. I don't think we'll be evacuating, so most of the rest is irrelevant. Although, I was just thinking about what we'd do if a chunk of our house ripped off or got crushed (these do happen, though more likely in a real storm; I experienced it in Tarboro). And I thought--well, I have a couple of tarps--hooray kit!! We couldn't cover a whole house, but we could cover a hole.

Part of the reason I feel peace is because my family is far away from all of this (see below for the flip side). I don't have to worry about anyone that I really, really care about.  Glad.

I said we were being productive, right? Well, my roommates are. I'm not. Not really. I've napped, eaten, bothered my roommates, and mostly missed my family and wished they were here to play with me. That's what stay-home storms are for. I did get to talk to Rachel. But it's not the same as having them here with me. And it's a little sad, because when I consciously think about it, I also know that they'll never be here again either. They're gone. At least I had them.

Which brings me to a couple of other thoughts. I know that one of the main reasons storms don't scare me is because of my knowledge of the plan of salvation. Lately more than ever, I have been acutely aware of the brevity of mortality, its true purpose. The very worse things that could happen from a storm aren't that bad; death is just a passing. And the intermediate bad things, we'll recover from sooner or later. We had a wonderful stake conference this past weekend. The high from that is part of the reason I'm so happy and at peace and not worried. I'm prepared and I'm not afraid.

One of the things on my mind is related, though unrelated. Nancy's mother-in-law passed away this past week. She was only in her 40's. She was diagnosed with cancer last year and given 1-2 years to live. But the actual end was still rather sudden. BUT Brent got to spend some good time with her in the last few days, so it feels better to them. It makes you think though. I was thinking about Brent and realizing that he is either the exact same age or one year away from it, as being the same age as my mother was when her mother passed away. Unlike my mother, Brent is lucky to have a wife with him (my mother didn't marry for 3 or 4 years after). But still, it makes me sad to think about. I'm glad she got to be there at the temple this summer, for their sealing. And again, grateful for a knowledge of the plan of salvation.

On my list of things to do today is catching up on blog posts (I have at least 4 that need to be written--this one was not one of those). But I'm really supposed to clean room/organize food storage that lives in my room. Then I get to blog. That's another reason I've been wandering around bothering people and eating--I don't want to do the task I'm supposed to do. :)

A final (maybe) thought. Listening to the Spirit can be hard. Still. Even after all these years, lots of experience, and--I think--a pretty refined ability to hear. I learned years ago that if I felt I should do something I didn't really want, it was probably a prompting. It took some time and practice, but I got it down. Now I'm trying to learn to distinguish my wants and the Spirit when they seem paralleled. Let me explain. When I continue to feel the need to go eat another apple dumpling--it's probably just me wanting it, right?  But what if I keep feeling it, even when I've talked myself out of it? Probably still my want, but how do I really know? Okay, well now, change the situation to something less crazy than an apple dumpling. I've had a couple of them in the past weeks and some of them it took quite a while before I realized--this is a prompting, not just my desires or laziness or whatever! And today I'm experiencing the consequences of one of those missed promptings. Last week I kept wanting to go get a book from the library. It's the next in a series that I'm trying to read slowly. No need to waste two weeks of my life reading book after book. So I've spaced them out, and tried to mostly use my time on other things. But all last week I thought about it. More than once I thought--I almost feel like it's a prompting to do this (in part because it repeated itself). But I know it's really just me wanting to escape reality and no, I don't need to read, I need to do X, Y, & Z.  But today, I'm pretty sure it was a prompting, not an important one, but still. Pretty sure that today would be better if I had that book. (Library is closed, of course.) Wish I had listened. Really do.

And that's about all. Longest unimportant blog post, but I'll sure enjoy it in the years to come. :)