Our new neighbors had us over for dinner tonight. I’ll bet you are thinking, Wow, nice neighbors. So are we. The food was awesome, too, so, you know, double bonus on that one.

Anyway, during dinner, their son came up and asked for more batteries for his laser gun, a toy he was sharing with J, who I swear thought he had died and gone to heaven.

“Oh, yeah, I don’t think we have any more batteries,” the dad said. “That’s definitely something we have to get soon, especially before the hurricane season gets into full swing.”

He said it so casually, so lightly, to his small son. DH and I exchanged looks of mild panic.

“Um, hurricane season?” I asked weakly.

Yeah, folks, hurricane season. We’ve officially moved to a place where they prepare for hurricanes. In a word, holy crap.

And we are woefully unprepared. Having just moved, we are still in a state of mild chaos, and of course we depleted our food storage supply before we moved, just so we wouldn’t have to move so much food. Ok, so our food storage consisted of 2 extra bottles of ketchup and some dried soup, but hey, we downed it, baby! Well, I do think there might be some soup left, but at this point, I have absolutely no idea which box it is in, or even if it got packed by our movers. But hey, they did pack some wild and crazy things that surely one would think would intuitively be garbage, so, you never know.

So I am appealing to you, Mormon Mommies, at least some of whom I am sure are the epitome of preparedness, and at least some of whom I hope live in hurricane or tornado prone areas. (Wait, that sounded kind of wrong. I don’t HOPE that you live in a place where wind gusts could blow you into the land of Oz, but you know what I mean, right?)

What should I do? What do I need? How am I supposed to adequately prepare myself for a situation with which I have had absolutely no previous experience? (Gee, it sounds a bit like preparing for motherhood, eh?) Do I stock up on batteries, giant flashlights, lots and lots of soup, extra propane for the grill, more bottles of ketchup, what? I’m seriously freaked out here, folks. Break out your provident living manuals, ladies, and let’s get readin’!