I get through dinner better than I expected I would. Having gone from a nearly empty home to one filled to the gills can overwhelm anyone, let alone a certifiable head case. My mom is going to come back every day for as long as I let her stay. She understands this might only be for ten minutes and she’s okay with that.
Ginger assures me she’s doing okay and by unspoken agreement, neither of us shares too much of what we’re going through. I just pray she’s having an easier time of it than I am, which would be truly amazing, because she’s doing it with three times the babies.
Over cupcakes, Kevin and Muffy pop open a few bottles of champagne and announce their engagement. I react by bursting into tears and screaming, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I’m so happy for you!” Then I grab them both and dance around the kitchen.
Muffy and I became a lot closer in the weeks she stayed with me during her divorce. Until that point, we were probably the least close in our quartet of sisterhood and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to get to know her better. I feel very close to her now and plan on keeping that up.
Kevin and I lost contact after high school and only reformed our friendship last year. We bonded through Weight Watchers, at a time when we were both at our most vulnerable. He’s proven to be the truest and dearest friend I have outside of blood relations. Having him in the family is the best thing I can imagine. Okay fine, being sane is the best thing I can imagine, but having Kevin for a brother runs a close second.
They’ve decided to aim for a summer wedding and as it’s a second for both, they’re opting to keep it pretty small. Muffy declares, “We both had big first weddings so we want this one to be relaxed and intimate.”
Kevin adds, “We’re going to throw the mother of all cookouts about a week after though, and ask everyone to come celebrate with us.”
While I have no idea what the summer will hold for me, I can only hope I’ll be back to normal. But until then I need to setup my crossbow training course in the basement. I just got an email that it will be arriving tomorrow, along with all of my emergency supplies.
Chapter 56
I have no idea how to get Elliot, his parents and Pip out of the house so they aren’t around to witness the epic UPS delivery. I decide to call Renée and see if she’ll invite them over at three o’clock for tea. I’m banking on the fact that their British DNA will make it nearly impossible to resist a proper tea.
Renée agrees when I falsely confess that I absolutely can’t stand having them home for another moment. I site postpartum related crazies and plead with her to help a sister out.
Elliot needs my assurance that I’ll be fine while they’re away and I give it. I even encourage, “I’m sure I’ll be feeling much better after a training session with Alba.” Yet another lie.
I wave them all off at 2:50 knowing full well our UPS delivery is always at three. Like clockwork, the phone rings at exactly three with the UPS man looking to be buzzed in. He’s brought the extra big super-sized truck and I tremble as I speculate how much of it’s mine.
The first words out of his mouth are, “Hello, Mrs. Fielding! You have quite a load here. Where do you want me to put everything?”
I ask if he’d mind wheeling it through the house to the basement door. When he asks if my husband is around to help me carry it down, I answer, “No, he’s away on business. My nanny and I will haul everything down ourselves.”
It turns out we’re Jeff’s last stop of the day. I’m guessing he must have been a Boy Scout because he offers to help us carry the load to the basement. I weigh the sincerity of his offer against the chance that he’s an evil doer and decide to trust him.
On his one hundred and twenty-third trip down the basement stairs, or maybe it was his four hundred and second, I gave up counting at forty, he asks, “You must be prepping for one hell of a winter!”
Holy crap, I can’t have him thinking I’m a prepper! Then he’d know where to come when the shit hits the fan and God knows how many people he’d bring with him. So I laugh, loud and hard and I’m hoping convincingly, when I respond, “Oh heaven’s, no! We’re collecting for a food drive at our church.” Note to self, make a nice donation to the soup kitchen to atone for a fib of this proportion.
He nods his head and asks, “What’s the flame thrower for?”
“Just a little summer BBQ we’re having. We thought we’d offer some competitive events.”
“Ah,” he responds, “that must be why you ordered crossbows.”
“Exactly!” I reply. “We have some really athletic friends.”
The gun safe weighs too much for us to carry down the stairs, so we help Jeff tilt it over and slide it down. It lands with a twelve hundred pound thud, but no harm is done. I have Jeff haul everything into my secret prepping room and then Abbie rewards him with two dozen of her famous chocolate chip chia and pine nut cookies. I add a hundred dollar bill to the mix and we bid Jeff a good day.
Ho-lee crap did I order a ton of stuff! It’s 4:45 by the time Jeff leaves and I feel like I’ve been bench pressing a house. The good news is that mentally speaking I don’t feel too bad. All this physical labor has left me feeling pretty level-headed.
The bad news is I’m going to have to figure out how to organize all this stuff without drawing attention to myself. Thankfully, I have Abbie to help.
By the time Elliot and his parents get home, I’ve showered and am fast asleep on our bed. Elliot kisses me and whispers, “Hey lazy bones, did you sleep the afternoon away?”
If he only knew. I smile and answer, “Guess I just needed to catch up.”
My husband sits down next to me and says, “I just go the strangest email from the State Department. They wanted to apologize for disturbing you the other day. What’s that all about?”
I’m flush with panic but manage to reply, “They said you were Googling some weird stuff on the computer and wanted to make sure no one was trying to make a bomb.” I force out a nervous giggle.
Elliot responds, “That’s strange. My new book has nothing to do with terrorism, bomb making or anything like that. You know what else is strange?”
I can’t imagine so I make noncommittal noise in reply. “Every time I go online, I’m flooded with ads for prepping websites and gas masks. That’s never happened before.”
I feel bad for what I’m about to do, but there’s no getting around it. “I told Abbie she could use the computer in the office while you were away. I’ll talk with her and see what she’s looking up.”
The Englishman shakes his head, “No need. She’s probably just researching something to do with gardening, and we’ve been tagged.”
I don’t know when the last time Elliot gardened, but gas masks and freeze dried potatoes aren’t usually part of the drill. Of course I don’t point this out to him.
Chapter 57
In addition to chickens, I want goats. Abbie has promised that if we get goats, she’ll make fresh goat cheese and even show me how to spin their wool into yarn. I wonder if I should get a loom. Maybe I’ll learn how to knit first and see where that leads. It’s like I’m channeling Ma Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie. I won’t stop until I’m shoeing horses and re-sodding the roof.
It’s the beginning of May, so it’s time to get the garden going. Abbie found someone to dig out the beds and till the soil. She also has 500 pounds of assorted seasoned animal manure arriving that will be mixed into the soil. The good news is that it’s seasoned so it doesn’t stink, but still, it’s a lot of poop.
The yard is full of men and machines tearing up our landscaping and I couldn’t be more excited. I am, however, not out there witnessing everything firsthand on the chance the gardeners will try to kidnap Sophie and smuggle her across the border. I’m aware Illinois doesn’t border another country, but I hear some weird stuff happens in Indiana.
I’m still horribly paranoid, as you can tell. The exercise helps with the panic but the paranoia seems to have taken up permanent residence. Every day
is a challenge. Happily, I’m getting more sleep, a ton of exercise and every new thing we do to prep seems to calm me. I long for the Mimi I once was. Faults and all, her life was way simpler than mine.
Richard is in town and he, Pip and the nanny are out directing the workers. My friend and sister-in-law have finally formed a friendship. They laugh together easily and seek each other out. Just yesterday I caught them kissing in the pantry. If things continue on, we may just have another wedding on the calendar.
While the household is in an uproar with all the yardwork going on, I decide to hole up in my bedroom and catch up on some reading. I’ve just received five new prepping books in the mail and I’m eager to start them.
I’ve never given preppers the time of day, until recently. Seriously, there’s been enough filling my head without inventing end of the world scenarios. But now that I’m a mom, heck, I have to be prepared for any eventuality because I have a child to protect. Why did no one ever tell me what a huge responsibility this is? It’s not like I would have rethought motherhood, but I most certainly would have enjoyed my pre-parenting days a little more.
Television shows and the media do their best to make preppers look totally nuts because it’s good for ratings. I site the guy who enjoys a refreshing glass of his own urine, comparing it to chamomile tea and the family in Idaho who’s building a bug-out dwelling out of potatoes.
However, the books I’m reading are filled with real life horrors that actually happened in the past. The Black Death, or plague as it was more commonly referred to, killed two hundred million people in three years! That’s two thirds of the U.S. population, today. To help you wrap your head around that, imagine your entire family gathered at a reunion and remove two out of three of them, and then multiple that by the entire freaking country. It took Europe an estimated hundred and fifty years to rebound from the devastation.
I know you’re saying, Mimi, that was almost seven hundred years ago. The plague isn’t even relevant today. Fine, how about the flu epidemic of 1918? It killed an estimated fifty to one hundred million people in a year. If that isn’t horrific enough, the healthier you were when you got it, the more deadly it was, as it did more damage to healthy immune systems.
If you’re one of those people who refuse to believe in the possibility of a pandemic, let me site the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. There’s no vaccine for a volcano. If it’s going to blow, it’s going to blow. And while there are no volcanos in Illinois, thank God, the Mount Tambora explosion blew ash twenty-eight miles into the air, blocking out the sun for the entire world. It essentially caused the same reaction as a nuclear winter, and is often referred to as the year with no summer.
No summer, means no food production, which of course leads us to famine. In case you’re one of those people who don’t think famines are alive and well, let me point you to North Korea, circa 1995 (I was alive for this one!), where an estimated three million people died of starvation.
Scientists claim the Yellowstone Caldera is long overdue for an eruption, and when it blows, it’ll make the 1815 Indonesian one look like a burp. We’re talking the immediate onset of another ice age. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to save us from that.
Along with volcanos, I’m helpless if an asteroid hits the planet. In 1902 something exploded in the air five miles above Siberia and the impact to the outlying area was one thousand times greater than the bomb that hit Hiroshima. It took out eight hundred square miles of land. Scientists hypothesize it was an asteroid that exploded. There’s really shit all I can do if something like that happens again. I just hope I don’t know it’s coming ahead of time and it takes us quickly.
As I’m new to the prepping game, I have to figure out what exactly I’m prepping for. I’ve picked famine, alien invasion (although I’m still sketchy on how to fully prepare for that one. Note to self: order more bullets), and an EMP strike.
An electro-magnetic pulse is moderately less scary to me than an alien invasion, but only because we know the outcome. In a matter of a second, we would be thrown back a hundred and fifty years in technology. There would be no electricity, all batteries would become obsolete, no phones, no water and no sanitation. As a result, there would be no supermarkets to buy food or clothing stores and really no way to get to them, even if they did exist, other than by bike or foot.
I take a break from Robert R. Forstchen’s, scariest book of all time, One Second After, to hop on the Internet and buy some bicycles. I settle on eight adult bikes and five to get Sophie through her childhood. I add a couple horns, pretty baskets and handlebar tassels, because there’s no sense in not enjoying the end of the world, right?
I make a quick call to a local well-drilling company before I go back to my research. After all, water is the most important thing for survival. I decide to research rain barrels and cisterns next.
By the time the garden crew comes in for a break, I have a wicked headache, but I’ve accomplished a lot of prepping. I take a moment to thank God I have the resources to do all this. I have no idea how everyone else is going to survive the coming apocalypse.
Chapter 58
Victoria invites me out for lunch today. I’m loath to go, but I can’t really come up with an excuse not to. She’s been so great about giving me space and not asking to hold the baby, I feel like I owe it to her to throw her a bone. So I make a tiny effort with myself and forgo my normal yoga pants and hoody for a skirt and nice top. When I get a gander at my toes, I opt for closed toed shoes so as not to horrify her by my lack of personal grooming. There is simply no time for pedicures and the like when one is prepping for the end of days.
It’s seventy-five degrees, so we decide to eat at a restaurant with outdoor seating. Sophie’s snoozing in her car seat, so I just tuck her under the table to keep her safe. I order crab cakes, a salad and an iced tea. Once the waiter’s gone, I have no idea what to say, so I just sit quietly and wait for the countess to speak.
Finally, Victoria offers, “Mimi, I know you’re having a hard time with postpartum.” I don’t confirm or deny. I mean, heck, it’s painfully clear I’m taking to it as gracefully as an elephant to a tight rope. She continues, “I wanted to share with you that I had a pretty rough time, as well.”
Now she’s got my attention. In case you haven’t heard, misery loves company. “Really?” I ask. “What were your symptoms?”
She smiles painfully, “I was afraid of everything. I was frightened to take the children out of the house and I was frightened to keep them at home. I was afraid we’d get into a traffic accident, an airplane crash or even get run over by a horse. You name it. I lived in fear of danger and as far as I was concerned, danger was everywhere.”
Wowza! I didn’t see this coming. It turns out my mother-in-law is something of a soul sister. I ask, “What did you do to stop being afraid?”
“Well,” she responds, “the first thing I did was take karate lessons.”
I could more easily see her joining the circus. I ask, “How long did you take them?”
She answers, “Three years. It took me that long to earn my black belt.” She adds, “My hands are registered weapons.”
Note to self, do not piss off Victoria. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have sworn that in a knock down drag out bitch fight, I could have taken her. Not anymore.
She continues, “Then I took race car driving lessons, thinking that I could mitigate some of the dangers on the road with better reflexes. After that, I learned how to fly an airplane.”
Oh my God, this woman is as nuts as I am! Although clearly, now I need to take karate, learn how to drive a race car and fly a plane because now I can add her worries to my own.
She pauses for a moment before saying, “I tell you all this in hopes that you’ll share your journey with me, so I can help you.”
I’m so completely overwhelmed by her declaration and honesty that I do what any hormonally challenged insane person would do. I burst into tears. The countess h
ands me a tissue. “We’re not so different, you and I, just two women trying to do the best for our families.”
I sob, “Thank you for sharing this with me, Victoria. I truly appreciate it. It’s just, I’m afraid you’ll think I’m totally crazy if I tell you what’s worrying me.”
She laughs, “Mimi, I‘m a sixty-six year old woman with a black belt in karate, I still race cars and just in case I’m flying on a plane and the whole crew drops dead, I can safely land a 747. I don’t think it’s possible for you to be crazier than that.”
Now she’s done it, gauntlet dropped. It’s a matter of honor that I tell her the truth, so I start with, “Really? Do you by chance think your husband is a reptilian alien bent on world domination?”
That takes her by surprise, let me tell you. She begins to open her mouth to respond, but closes it. This happens a few more times before she finally manages, “No, actually, I don’t.”
I’m immediately horrified I told her that. I mean, what will I do if she tells Elliot? He might divorce me on grounds of insanity and get custody of Sophie. I want to take it back but I don’t think there’s any possibility of shoving that cat back into the bag.
She finally manages, “Why do you think that, exactly?”
So I tell her all about Ancient Aliens and the weird stuff I’ve read online about the royal family. You know how they’re really lizards that rule all the important families of the world.
Victoria asks, “Would you mind showing me this program? I’d be curious to hear more.”
I demand, “You mean you aren’t ready to have me locked me up over this?”
She shrugs her shoulders, “Not particularly. I can assure you, though, if Elliot and therefore Archibald, really are lizards, I’ve had no indication of it. And I venture they aren’t a part of some evil agenda, if they are.”
Mimi Plus Two (The Mimi Chronicles Book 2) Page 23
