We have a day left before Hurricane Matthew hit town. There is a bit of anxiety there because I have never been in a hurricane condition before. Blizzard? Plenty of time. I lived in New York for 40 years before we moved to Charleston in 2011.
When I first heard about the Hurricane Matthew, I was amused because both my husband and my son are named Matthew. My father is Mateo which is the Spanish word for Matthew. Being a namesake of those dearest to me, I hope and pray Hurricane Matthew will move east of us and spare us.
We have been doing preparation since Tuesday. We finally finished boarding the windows yesterday except those on the third floor. It’s much too high and we figured projectiles will not reach them. Keeping my fingers crossed.
We took my Amalfi porch bench inside the house. Plants were taken in the back patio which is a protected area except for a Jasmine plant which has grown so tall and keep on tumbling so I took it inside. A lizard must be hiding in one of the leaves because I saw it crawling into the powder room last night so I picked it up with a napkin and threw it outside the front door.
We would have evacuated except for the fact that my husband is on home dialysis and that means loading boxes of dialysis supplies in the car and we don’t even know how long we’ll be away so we opted to stay put.
We have food and water. Canned goods and charcoal in case we have to use the grill. Both our cars have full tank of gas.
I’m sure we’ll have power outages. We have flashlights and cellphones are constantly charging. Worst scenario, we’ll plug them in the car. And talking of outages, we can do manual dialysis instead of using the machine. It’s really my biggest worry – my husband’s dialysis. I was also advised to put him on emergency renal diet meaning less food and fuel intake because without his full dialysis treatment, his body cannot function properly. Still the diet has protein in the form of peanut butter but less portion of meat.
So we brace ourselves. BAHALA NA!!!
Bahala Na means leave it to God in Filipino. Ironically, it is the title of one of my books.
Until next time. Stop and smell the roses.
Rosalinda, The Rose Lady
Rosalinda R Morgan 