With hurricane season fast approaching, there are many preparations that need to be made. As you may find by reading the following story, it pays to think ahead. Leave early and don’t wait to be told to evacuate. Travel light and bring only the necessities (it may be cheaper to buy from where you are going than to travel with a great deal of items that weigh your vehicle, and thus, your trip, down).

If you are not evacuating, board up your house or get someone to put those metal shutters on your home. Bags of mulch can work as well as sandbags, if you can’t get sandbags for some reason. Sweep your roof and clean out your gutters, or hire the kid down the street to do it. Put lawn furniture and yard toys on the porch so that they will not blow through someone’s window.

Buy those LED flashlights that wind up. The winding can be a pain, but then you don’t have to live in the dark if you run out of batteries. Oh, and don’t forget to buy batteries. A wind up radio, or even battery operated radios, are good to have. Candles are good to have, too, but useless if you don’t have a match or a lighter handy.

Dollar Tree usually has candles and glow sticks in the form of necklaces for children to play with. These can light up a walk-in closet dimly and last for hours. Stock up on nonperishable items throughout the year. Pay close attention for sales that offer “Buy one get one free,” and jump on those bargains.

Buy gallons of water and smaller bottles of water in flats, if you can. You can also freeze gallons of sink water to use for ice in coolers after the power goes out. Save those little packets of condiments from the fast food restaurants and hotels. You never know when they will come in handy. Same goes for napkins and plastic grocery bags.

For small children, have crayons, coloring books, clay, blocks and matching card games. For the older children, plug in the Game Boys, PSP’s and other handheld game players. You may even want to download games to your cell phone before you plug them in. Keep them and anything else that is chargeable (ie laptops and DVD players) plugged in until the power goes out.

Make sure your pet has a secure place to be and plenty of food and water. If the animal lives outside, bring it into the garage or an outer room if you cannot bring yourself to allow it into your living quarters.

Also, stock up on first aid supplies. Make sure you have a supply on hand for everything that can happen. Stores like Target and Walmart have generics for items like Benadryl, Motrin and Tylenol. Bandaids and Triple Antibiotic Ointment are also good to have on hand. Get a refill on any prescriptions that are running low.

Fill up your gas tank. Call your mother and help her get ready, too. After the power goes out, the greatest joy for frustrated parents of children trying to live without electricity is HOSING THE KIDS DOWN FOR A BATH IN THE BACKYARD at the end of the day. It’s a great release of bad energy, and the children love it. Other details for your personal agenda for preparedness will surface for you to remember. WRITE THEM DOWN and cross them off as they are done.

Here is the story of our 2004 hurricane season. This is a true story, and although it may seem rather eventful, all of the details are true, and I didn’t even include EVERYTHING that happened.

Hurricane Charley was no big deal to us. We got a little wind and rain and moved on. We had no major damage, no financial burden, no power loss. Then Frances came along. My husband and oldest son had already been planning to go on a trip with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend, their kids, and his girlfriend’s mother. Their uncle was also coming in from Arkansas. They had rented a cabin in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Upon learning that Frances was coming, we decided we would ALL go instead of me and the two babies evacuating separately or being left behind. We also brought my little sister. So we packed up ourselves, our three children, my little sister and our most precious belongings in a Jeep and a rental car, and we hit the road.

The total trip to North Carolina took 31.5 hours. We had to stop at the ER at Halifax Hospital in Daytona Beach because our 9-month-old baby had a fever and was dehydrated. This small detour took about 3 hours. After getting the prescription filled, we got back on the highway. Gasoline was extremely high-priced in northern Florida. We don’t know if that was actually gouging or if they were already high. My sister paid more than $3.00 for one 20oz. bottle of water and a pack of gum. We did what SEEMED to be an average of about 2mph on I95 from Melbourne to the Georgia border. Jacksonville was a little faster. My baby kept crying so hard that he made himself throw up. He hated being in the car seat. I kept having to pull over and nurse him in a very awkward position because the car was so full. Luckily, my little sister was also able to feed him bottles and change his diapers in the back seat while we kept moving.

Once across the border, we couldn’t find a hotel with vacancy. We pulled over and slept in a parking lot for about an hour, I think. At one gas station on the border of two states (I think Georgia and South Carolina), a man was beating up his girlfriend and threw a glass bottle in the parking lot, shattering glass all over and scaring everyone. The gas lines were very long, and what little food they had was terrible.

Somewhere in South Carolina, the brakes on my SUV started smoking and had to be replaced. My husband said I rode the brakes too much on the steep mountain roads (MY opinion was then and still is that slowing down and stopping is preferable to careening off the side of a mountain…). Nevertheless, we were forced to spend the $450 we had set aside for the electric bill on the brake job, which took hours.

FINALLY, we made it to the cabin, which was three miles up a mountain, eight miles from a cell phone signal (And I won’t MENTION how much my phone bill was when I returned from all the roaming charges). My husband had NO signal for the entire trip. The cabin had been advertised as having five bedrooms. It had three. Everyone else had already arrived and picked out their rooms. We were given the basement. It was pretty nice, with two bunkbeds and a couch. There was also a hot tub, which was nice. However, with so many people in such a small place, a lot of bickering and arguing went on. There was also a lot of laundry to do and food to buy and cook, etc.

At one point, I went the wrong way down a rocky mountain road, thinking I was heading down the mountain. I was heading down the mountain, alright. Luckily, I was in a Jeep with four wheel drive. I had myself, my two babies and my sister in the car. I had no cell phone signal, so I couldn't call to the cabin for help.  I had to go back up the narrow and rocky mountain path in reverse because there was no place to turn around. Finally, I decided to chance it and used four wheel drive to get back facing forward. Lucky for us, I picked a good ridge to do this on.

We went to an unnamed fast food restaurant in Cherokee for lunch one of the days, and bought five roast beef sandwiches. I handed one of them back to my two-year-old daughter, who luckily passed it up in favor of the McDonald’s food we had also bought. My sister was going to feed pieces of it to my baby, but when she opened it, there was a THREE INCH LONG rusty razor blade with cheese all over it. We called the police and went back to the restaurant. The woman at the drive-though had been very rude to begin with, so I blamed her. The police confiscated the razor. The manager indicated it was “unintentional. The night crew must have used it to clean the microwave and then stored it on the wrapper shelf.” I expressed my shock at someone not noticing a razor that size when wrapping it in a sandwich wrapper. No one was hurt, so we couldn’t sue. They did mail us a $25 money order, which I still have somewhere.

My sister and I were freaking out so badly that we kept busting out laughing, and crying, all at the same time. This was officially the trip from hell. Well, at least we got to have one day of fun at the Cherokee Fun Park. We also later visited Hospital Hill where my daughter and I both had bilateral ear infections.

The drive back to Florida only took 12 hours. There was a sense of foreboding knowing Ivan was coming. We were relieved when it turned and went elsewhere. We only lost power for two days due to Frances (according to my in-laws and my brother, who had stuck it out in our house). The power was back on before we even got home.

Then came Jeanne. It seemed to come out of nowhere because I had been working so hard after being out of town to catch up at work that I had not even had a chance to watch TV. The day before it hit, I rounded up what supplies I could for the newest addition to the 2004 hurricane family. I was delirious.

The hurricane seemed to take forever. My baby’s fever had returned. I spent the day cleaning out the walk-in closet, and the night in the walk-in closet under two mattresses with three children (my husband slept on the couch that night and refused to join us), alternating Tylenol and Motrin for my baby by the light of a glow stick. I was also listening fearfully as branches hit the roof and winds whistled, wondering if a tornado was about to rip the little house apart. Once it passed, I took my baby back to the ER here because I still could not keep his fever down….The rest is history…people going crazy on the roads…downed power lines…lines at the mall for ice and water and food……it was INSANITY!!! Cheers.