How To Be Prepared...For An Impromtu Found Art Exhibit

The other day I was telling my agent Michael, who recently moved to Los Angeles,  about my fear of earthquakes.  We're talking verging-on-paranoid fear (some might say I've already reached the point of paranoia).  He assured me that one of the first things he did when moving to California was prepare survival kits for the house and the car. Truly, he is my kin.  I'm all over emergency preparedness kits.  For the house.  Because, well, I'm not in my car that often.  And I tend to forget that other people are.   So the other day, Dan came home from work with this:

This was once part of our car emergency kit.  By once, I mean however long ago it was I assembled these kits.  I'm guessing it was a long, long, time ago, back when the purple thing was still a candle, the pack of Big Red was still chewable and the change...well, I don't really know what that's all about.

I'm thinking that with these kits, we'd survive all of 7 seconds in a disaster.

Now, for the good news!

1) I've since updated the kits.  In case an emergency strikes and we happen to be in the car, I've upped our survival time to 3 1/2 hours.

2)  Physical Therapist Amanda retested me and yes!  When I walk, I am no longer in the "fall risk" zone.   So in an emergency, if I am required to walk, don't worry about me falling.  I can go all night, baby.  Oh yeah.

3) Lately I've been working on a set of goals with the young women who I will, in only a few months, be taking on yet another camping adventure. One of these goals is to learn a new skill.  As my new skill I decided to learn to  refinish our bedroom dressers.  These dressers, while super-functional, are really, really ugly.  And I have a pretty high tolerance for ugly.

Oh vanity, thy name is Em Dawg.   I get out of the "fall risk" zone and think I can do anything.  Including refinish a dresser.  All I can say is that my accomplishment today was changing the sheet of paper in the power sander.

Okay, this is not the power sander.  I'm still not sure why.  I took another picture, one of me next to the power sander, but taking photos of myself is another New Skill I Must Learn because it was so bad I stuck with a power sander still-life.  Only now, instead of the still life, I have a Mac battery.  Why is there even a picture of a Mac battery on my camera?

If we had our Mac with us in case of an emergency, our odds of surviving unscathed would be through the roof.  As long as the battery was charged.