Being prepared for emergencies is a bit of a bugaboo of mine. I over prepare sometimes I think. I don't really like to advertise what we have and what we have done and how we have prepared because you never know who else is reading this... but here goes - here are the basics of it. We don't live in hurricane areas but I prepare for similar types of things. I have taken the idea of food, shelter, water to heart and covered that every which way I can- I would strongly suggest you do some research before you do anything else. There are a lot of sites out there that will offer advice. I might have some of those marked if you want to email me. There are a few good books as well about emergency preparedness. One resource online I found provided a year supply of food you can purchase during the year- for example, it lists nuts after christmas when they go on sale and it will tell you buy x number of cans for each person in your family. IF you followed this plan at the end of a year you would have extra food that would feed your family for almost 6 months (on my estimate) with adding nothing. Another source I found provided 3 months in a box - three months worth of food that fit in a box under a waterbed. As for food- consider some of those food tabs that are just like huge horse pills but you can live on them for a month if you have to. We bought several bottles of them and didn't find them expensive as they last for a long time and don't have to be replaced very often and provide peace of mind. They also take up very minimal space. - I have a 72 hour kit in all our cars. It has basic food bars that are supposed to provide the calories you need in an emergency, water for 72 hours, a small first aid kid with bandaids, needle, thread etc, and some cash in fives, tens, and twenties. Emergency blankets (two for a person - one for a tent and one for a blanket). - I have a 72 hour kit in the house that we can grab if that is all the warning we have. I figure between the 72 hour kit in a car and in my house we might be ok for three days if we had to be. - I also have one in our camper in case something happens while we are camping and have to leave the camper for some reason. (see, I over plan a bit). -- if you want a comprehensive list of what is in mine you can email me and I'll see if I can dig it out. But there are a ton of lists of suggested items online. - I also have a garbage can (rubbermaid) full of stuff. It is just heavy that I can barely lift it. If I had to though, I could throw it in the car and run. It has more food and water. It has some more cash in it as well. It has some clothes and while I'm writing this I'm thinking I need to double check and make sure they still fit the kids. I figure based on the season all I need to grab if I have time to grab this as well as a 72 hour kit and run is coats. - I have a camper and we have kept food in there as well. as we camp it gets switched around so I don't worry too much about the food. I also keep extra kid clothes and jackets in there for everyone. We have an evacuation list by the phone in our family planner book. IF John is home he wn't think to look at it but I will. In there it says in order of importance what to grab 1. 72 hour kit, 2. garbage can for emergencies 3. hook up camper 4. put water in camper 5. grab papers and/or computer On the bottom of that same paper we have a contact list of people to call and leave messages at and/or addresses and places to meet if we get seperated. We have two copies so if we are at home and something happens we can each take one and get to work and have that in our pockets in case later we get seperated. What I haven't done that I need to do is double check on my garbage can as mentioned above and make some copies of papers that we might need in the event of an emergency- insurance, bank statements, etc. I try to look for things that do double duty- safety pins for example can pin together clothes if you need them to, be used as a hook for fishing, help you set up a tent etc. Basic tools for turning on and off gas etc. If you are very careful you can pack a lot in a small space. It is very overwhelming at first when you begin thinking about it and working towards being prepared for worst case scenarios. However, when you are done, it's very comforting to know you are ok and your family will be ok if you can have any control over the situation. Here are a few sites and you can pick and choose what you need from that: http://www.logicsouth.com/~lcoble/bible/bible.html fema.gov

Thanks for the advice so far- it is very helpful. Paigect, we had considered moving closer to his kids a year ago, but it is not an option right now because of our jobs. There are also issues with his ex harrassing him (obscene phone calls and the like) and it seems that the stress level for my fiance is lower with him living away from her. I am not clear as to how much the autistic child depends on his father as part of his routine. When he was in my house, the child was very stressed and wanted to leave the whole weekend to go home, although we did everything possible to keep him occupied. Because of this, I believe it is just too disruptive to him to be traveled. He also acted the same way in his grandparents' house for the first few months until he adjusted to the routine there. But, because of the severity of his condition, I do not know if he would even notice the difference between monthly and twice-monthly visits. I don't want to make that assumption having never been exposed to a developmentally disabled child, but it seems to me that an infant would notice her dad gone more than he will. When he was here, his father did most of the caretaking, but because the autistic child needs so much supervision, I ended up taking care of the girl the whole time and cooking all meals for the family, etc. which was hard because I had been working all week and had no down time(my job demands a lot of me during the week). It is true that I have not been as active as I should be with going with my fiance to visit his kids at his parents'. This has been largely due to my pregnancy, but I do agree that after the baby is born I could, and plan to, take a more active role in going up there with him and spending time with the kids. The baby's grandparents will want to see her, regardless, and it is important to me that we are providing them with that opportunity. My fiance is trying to make alternate arrangments with his brother to bring the kids to the brother's house once a month to alleviate the stress on his ill mother. I hope his brother will accomodate this. I feel that it is not only exhausting to the grandma and to me to have him driving so far every weekend, but to my fiance to make this trip twice a month. Once a month would be more managable, and there is no reason why a 13 year old could not take the train here alone (after a practice run with dad). I also agree that he feels a great deal of guilt for the situation his children are in due to having divorced parents and probably overcompensating. Compounding it, is his ex wife not handling the situation very well. She has been living with someone else for longer than we have been together, but seems to be very jealous that her ex is doing fine without her and about to start a family with someone new. I have never met or talked to her and prefer to keep it that way, and my fiance tries to keep a business-type relationship with her. However, she has been feeding information to the daughter that her father will not want to see her and the son anymore once the baby is born, and this has created jealously between the daughter and the baby even though the baby is not born. I can only hope that the daughter will grow out of this or that the jealousy will be smaller once she meets her little sister. I do not know if it is normal behavior for a 13 year old to express such extreme jealousy toward a baby sister (she tells her dad that he is ruining her life by having this baby, that she was happy being the only girl, that she hates the baby). Otherwise, she is well behaved with me and I have enjoyed having her here the 2 times she came to visit. I have a wonderful relationship with my stepmother and hope that over time we will, too. The ex wife is sure to be very unhappy if we try to reduce the amount of time he is picking up the autistic son, as she seems to want to go out to bars and party a great deal, and cannot find another babysitter. It seems strange to me that she never wants her kids on the holidays. What she thinks matters very little to me, but the fact that she drags the girl into it makes the situation harder. To me, it is not appropriate to say anything negative about the other parent in front of the child. I believe that my fiance has a certain level of fear that she will try to take the kids away from him (which is ridiculous, he is a wonderful father to those kids and she would have no grounds in court). It is a complicated situation, and I just don't want to be selfish and whiny about it. I understand that there are real challenges associated with marrying a man is divorced with kids from a previous marriage, but I also believe very strongly that my baby deserves a normal life, and I don't want my only baby to miss out on time with her father. Again, I have no idea how much an infant needs her father but I expect that being away from home 2 weekends a month would interfere with their bonding. I can handle a great deal here on my own, and he does work very hard to contribute to this household while he is here, but to be gone so much seems excessive. All of this, I have discussed with my fiance, and he understands, but I can tell he feels a great deal of guilt and I don't want to make him abandon his children. Just the opposite. I just want to make sure I am not out of line for feeling this way because I don't want to make the situation even more unfair for all involved when there are 3 kids this affects. Any more opinions on this, I would really enjoy hearing- and thanks again for the input.

I didn't bookmark it, but someone posted on Facebook a video of a young woman who had lived with and honest-to-goodness immune system disorder. Living with that, and then having what remained of her immune system destroyed so she could receive a bone marrow transplant, she had this advice: 1) Washing hands for 20 seconds was not even the minimum for her, more like 40 seconds, at least. Never touching her face, especially her eyes, nose and mouth. Washing before she ate, and all the other times one would normally do that. 2) Keeping the frequently touched areas of her home clean. That means cleaning counters, handles, the fridge, the oven, everything that's touched a lot, *then* disinfecting those things. 3) She stayed away from people she didn't know were healthy. I can't remember if she wore a mask, but it seems likely. These tactics kept her alive long enough to get a transplant and have it succeed. It seems if it worked for her, it would work for most people. It's not a matter of how long viruses "stick" to things. Forever. But viruses die. They die quicker on porous things that wick the moisture away (cloth, cardboard) than sweaty, sticky handrails. If I left groceries on my porch the larger beasties in nature (deer, raccoons) would be having a feast. I suppose they could stay in the garage, but chipmunk and squirrel droppings don't make the food more palatable. Obviously, refrigerated food needs to go there. If I saw another customer pawing at or picking over food, I'd tell the store management and let them deal with it.

Lukki, my DIL's kitchen is the same. She's not a cook but will bake brownies or banana bread once in a while. It makes me crazy to try to cook something for my grandson when I'm babysitting. It's a large, square kitchen with good counter space and storage, but there is no island, so it's like 9 or 10 ft from one side of the kitchen to the other. The work triangle is HUGE, lol. There are 2 lazy susan corner cabinets, kitty corner from each other. The one closest to the stove, where there is a microwave on the counter and a tiny bit of counter space, holds all the baking ingredients and some misc pieces. Kitty corner, on the side where the sink is, where there is one full counter run with nothing but the stand mixer on it, has all the pots and pans. OMG. Totally backwards from the most efficient arrangement. I do all I can to avoid having to cook there. Funny thing is, she'd be totally fine with me suggesting a different arrangement, but I don't want her to feel self conscious or bad that I noticed that.