The National Weather Service has issued the following warning:

We were supposed to go out of town this weekend for my nephew’s baptism. However, the impending storm of the century (cue The Weather Channel crisis music) swirling around out in the Gulf of Mexico may prevent us from traveling south.

In fact, the Contraflow Lane Reversal may even make it impossible to travel in a southerly direction this weekend.

(OK. Contraflow Lane Reversal exercises will probably not be affecting our particular route, nor will they probably be in use by the time we wish to leave town, but I just wanted to throw the term Contraflow Lane Reversal into the post.)

Seriously though, the weather reports claim we will be in a flash flood watch all weekend accompanied by 30-45 mph winds gusting to 70 mph. There is also talk of power outages.

So, while I am not panicked enough to think I need to go shopping tomorrow for supplies to get us through should we need to hunker down during the dreaded storm, I AM thinking that since I had planned to be away for the weekend we may not actually have any food to eat should plans change.

On the other hand, I don’t want to go out and buy a lot of perishable food items just in case we do lose power.

Also, we don’t camp (for me it’s mostly because of the bugs and the dirt) so I’m really not sure how we would cook anything if the power went out. My first thought is to use the barbeque grill, but I’m thinking that might be a fool’s errand in torrential rains and 70 mph winds. Call me crazy.

I am left with the following grocery list in the face of what will be left of Ike come Saturday up here in our neck of the woods:

Peanut butter crackers
Chocolate
Trail mix
Extra chocolate

Oh, and I should probably throw some bottled water on the list, too.

For any loved ones reading this post worrying about our well-being and survival in the midst of possible power outages, flooding, and strong winds, please don’t worry. Even though I was not a girl scout, I do have some survival skills, am generally prepared for most scenarios, and let’s not forget the asset of creativity.

(And, knowing how hyped up and inaccurate the weather forecasters can be, it will probably just be breezy and drizzly.

And we'll have chocolate. We will survive.