HURRICANE SANDY:  A LICENSE TO EAT

On Monday morning when my husband walked in the door with two crumb cakes and two loaves of Italian bread, I thought he was crazy.  It was eaten by day three.  We have moved on to consuming food items in the pantry we normally turn our noses up at.  You know the items I refer to — the last flakes left in cereal boxes, cans of pickled beets, black pitted olives, and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup.  I am munching on French’s French Fried Onions  leftover from last Thanksgiving 2008 as I write this post.  Since Sandy began her march up the Eastern seaboard, I have eaten more carbs than in the last two weeks combined.

We are better off than most on the fourth day of the worst catastrophe to the hit the Northeast in the last 100 years (also my fourth day of retirement–not exactly how I envisioned it).  We have a generator that powers the fridge, the hot water heater, and one outlet in the kitchen.  We also have a gas stove.  We are all basically living in the kitchen.  I guess that’s what life was like in the log cabin era. One room living. Ugh.  I currently have two grown children “working from home” complaining that I swallow my coffee too loud.  If I crinkle a bag they complain they can’t hear on the phone.  Really?  I had no trouble hearing on the phone while chaos reined all around me for 20 years.

Some might say all this “togetherness” is wearing thin.  This latest tragedy only makes me more aware of how fragile our world really is, and how sometimes all we have is “togetherness”.