Hurricane Irma is coming to town. And we’re hunkering down and getting ready.

Quilted Twins’ main office, state side, is located in a small town called Dade City, FL, up in the center of the state, not to be confused with Dade County, Florida, (which is in Miami) the area that is to receive the landfall of this storm.

When Irma hits Miami on Sunday morning, we’re still several hours north of there. It’s a 4 hour drive under normal circumstances. Right now it’ll take a lot longer than that, since the roads are plugged with people.

In our area, the roads are abnormally cluttered with people hurrying hither and yonder. What is normally a quiet town is busy with people running into stores, buying up supplies and stocking up on snacks and non-perishables.

None of us here in our town should be affected by storm surge. We are far too far inland to be affected much by water. We will get undoubtedly get rain. Lots of rain. And wind. Lots of wind.

The irony of the whole situation right now is the quest of everyone for water. Water. Water. Everywhere. And not a drop in a bottle, that is.

Every store shelf is empty of bottled water, and that seems to have the whole state in a tither.

I never have understood the need to buy bottled water, however.  I just bagged up my own water.

Saturday we’ll fill our bathtub so we’ll have plenty of water for flushing toilets. We’ve started freezing ice cubes ahead, and I’ve been putting bags into the freezer, to make my own chunks of ice, which can be melted for drinking, if need be.

I have the laundry as caught up as possible, clean sheets are at the ready, in case someone needs a place to hunker down, and we have our portable batteries all charged up.

Thankfully, our home is high and should be dry, as we are on top of what could be classified as a Florida hill, though real hills are few and far between in Florida.

What will get us will be power outages and wind damage, as we have about 30 or more trees on our property, with branches that will undoubtedly become flying missiles.

I gathered a few pictures for you today as I went about my business, so you could see what is happening in our normally sleepy town.

At the stores, shelves of water and bread, and peanut butter are empty.

Gas lines are long, if there is gasoline, and canned meats and soups have already found homes in people’s pantries. Thankfully, I didn’t need much of anything, since I keep a well-stocked pantry. In fact, I’m trying to downsize it, since my family has scattered to the ends of the earth.

However, I have added some sweet snacks, and have bagged up water and have it freezing in the freezer, to help keep the freezer cold in case of power outages.

We have located our candles, purchased a couple more long handled lighters to make lighting our candles easier and have kerosene for our old fashioned lanterns at the ready.

On Saturday we’ll park our vehicles right up against the house and secure all of our yard items, to keep them from flying away and becoming targets that could come through windows.

We’ll watch the news as long as we have power, to see when the storm is passing us by. If the storm comes by during the day, I might even venture out and get some pictures and video, as a hurricane is truly something to behold. Being in the eye is really incredible.

We’ll rest easily, as we know that our days are in the Lord’s hands, and He won’t allow anything to happen to us that isn’t His will.

We have cancelled church for Sunday, as by then we should have lots of wind and rain coming our way.

Over all, there’s an air of unease and excitement, generally, because, after all, this is classified as an “act of God” and everyone loves a day off from the normal, even if the normal causes some stress.

Pray for us, as we are praying for others. We are as prepared as we can be at this point in time.

And then, of course, Irma could turn and blow out into the Atlantic and miss us completely. Then we get to eat our snacks and drink our water!

In the meantime, check out the fabrics. Order all you want. We’ll get them out after Irma passes us on by.