Pasco County, FL –

Hurricane Ian.

Just those words will send fear and dread down our spine. However, I must admit that there is always a slight twinge of excitement over dealing with the “different” or “unknown.” I confess that we all felt that way around here.

Over the past week now, we’ve been hearing about this “at first unnamed” storm, and how it was going to hit us on Tuesday. So, we started early by charging up all of our external battery backups!

Well, here it is on Wednesday now, and just in the past 24 hours our ENTIRE view of what might/could happen has changed up.

We were formerly thinking it was going to make landfall at Tampa Bay or even a little north of us, landing us on the “bad side” of the storm. Now, it’s headed straight into the coast of Florida way south of us, and will slam into the barrier islands south of here.

Obviously, when you read this, (Thursday) we’ll either be in the thick of it or the storm will have passed by.

Ian has been an incredibly slow moving storm. If you’re not in an area hit by hurricanes, you’ll understand that often times the part that makes it so awful is the anticipation and dread of “what’s going to happen?”

The K is us…. and the hurricane came on ground down there near Ft. Myers.

This time it’s been no different. Only no one seems to have gotten the track right. So, instead of going up to the armpit of Florida, and/or the Nature Coast, or even Tampa Bay, it has hit way south and even affected Key West, the spot that they had stated over the weekend would completely MISS the storm.

After having been down to the Keys this summer, I can assure you that I would NOT want to be on the Keys during a hurricane. There’s already water everywhere. I don’t think I would want more, unless, of course, it’s on fabric. Then I’ll take water all day long!

We had been told that we’d start to feel the effects by 7 p.m. on Tuesday night. However, since nothing much would happen in the morning, we did keep the store open. However, I was at Walmart, shortly after 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning, buying still more supplies. I mean, can you really have too many snacks and supplies? Diet Mt. Dew is tasty, even at room temperature, and those sandwich bags means I can package up pieces of fabric by lantern light, if necessary!

I asked the lady at the service desk help to take a picture of me heading out the door by 7:30 a.m, with shopping done there. Then I headed over to Winn Dixie, where I know the chips and dip were on sale at a great price for stocking up!

I purchased some bread, pastries for room temperature-power outage kind of eating, plus chips and dip, which could also be eaten in the dark or by lantern light. Sweet pickle relish rounded out my staples because if I’m going to eat a canned tuna or chicken sandwich, I at least want some sweet pickle relish in the sandwich. We live well stocked with canned goods - tuna, chicken, baked beans, canned soups, and a case or two of bottled water — just because, we do…

At the store we don’t have much to do, because we are in a strip mall, and the windows are well protected by the awnings.

We did move two of our benches inside, because they are more lightweight than others, and we didn’t want them to become missiles

I also moved a pot away from potential “lifting” winds, so it couldn’t be hurled into a nearby window. Jessica had moved a pot of flowers out from the potential downpours, so the flowers don’t drown.

I bought these lanterns for the store use, but since we’ll not be there, I passed them out for use by our staff.

Other than that, we did pull down all of our lanterns, and passed them out to the staff who wanted some, so that if the power goes out, we’d be able to work our way around our own homes. I purchased these lanterns to keep at the store, because we’ve had our power go out at random times, and these lanterns are amazingly bright and safe, being run on batteries.

The biggest thing we did was finish all the orders, and I took them to the post office at 12:30 p.m., since very few people came out to the store, due to the storm preparations going on all over the state of Florida.

Then I went over to Mom’s house to help get her situated. For now it’s easier for one of us to go to stay with her, rather than have her come to us, and we had arranged for a couple who needed to evacuate to come and stay with her. They were to bring their own supplies.

Over at Mom’s house I helped her bottle up some water and we put it on the counter. I doubt we’d need that much water, since she’s not a huge water drinker. We also put some water in buckets in case of a power outage, so we could flush toilets.

Mom is set with lots of bottled and “jarred” water!

After helping out at Mom’s house for an hour or more, I came back to the store and put some water into small bathroom trash cans (they seem very, very thick and water proof), just in case of power outages, so we could flush toilets.

My internet was out at my house, according to my hubby, so I wrote emails at the office in case our power and internet and cell phone coverage goes away. I need to life at QuiltedTwins.com to continue for the rest of the unaffected world!

Then, I printed the orders that were in and left, so I could come back and do more preparation at my house. See, we didn’t have to DO the orders, as there’s no airplanes running or even the post office working. We can cut fabric without power, since our rotary cutters are manual, but we can’t retrieve them with no power, so we print whenever we can. And at that point, getting my own house in order was more important than prepping orders.

When I got back home, I hee hawed. Ken had tied down my new carport to his tractor.

Ken had tied down my new birthday present - the carport, and tied it to his tractor, by the time I got home yesterday evening! It just made me laugh.. truly laugh out loud. It looked like the spaghetti models I’d seen the meteorologists draw on my tv screen!

Most of what we do in preparation for a hurricane is “just in case.” You take in anything that could be a flying weapon, make sure you have clean kitty litter, and lots of cat food. Then, you hunker down and just wait it out.

And ….a good sense of humor is probably the BEST thing you can do in preparation for a hurricane. If you see Ken and me laughing about our situation, it’s because we’ve done everything we can think of to prepare, and the best defense is a good sense of humor. Not taking life’s situations too seriously, is the best way to deal with power being out, no internet, no running water and so forth. We have been through many storms.

We know to create our own indoor lighting with mirrors off the outdoor sunlight and shoot it into the house through the open door. We’re ready with lanterns, candles, batteries, flashlights and headlamps.

Our laundry is clean, and freezers are stuffed to the gills with frozen ice or products. We have water in every available known container with lids. Being prepared for what we know might happen is about all you can do. In fact, I even wrote paychecks a day early, so as to be ready, in case everything shuts down— i.e., internet, power, cell.

water in the bowl, batteries, head lamp, drinks, pitcher of water

We are incredibly thankful that we have escaped the brunt of it, and continue to pray for those who are in the worst path of Ian.

However, reality smacks us in the face, and of course, our staff still has to be paid, so we do ask that you continue to order if you aren’t affected by Ian. We’re planning to be back to the store on Saturday for you to come in, if you live close enough and we all have power and roads! Otherwise, order online if you see anything you need! We do appreciate you all and the incredible concern for us and our entire staff.

Here’s a screen shot Becky got of the size of this storm over a map of the USA.

Thank you so much for your continued support. We love what we do, and I hope it shows! We trust that you love sewing it up!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Feel free to browse the site.

Hurricane Ian Preparations: What we do to prepare at Quilted Twins Headquarters