Day 54

Many of us in the Pacific Northwest already had an emergency kit on hand in case of earthquake, but ours is pretty meager. Now that we’ve been this far into a slow emergency, I have a better sense for what’s needed in such a kit. I won’t get rid of the bottled water and space blankets, but there are some things we’re going to need to add, based on their indispensability in the last 54 days:

• Spices. I don’t recommend going into a long term emergency with anything less than a fully-stocked spice rack. So long as you’re still alive, your food should make you feel the life you still have.

• Seeds. A good emergency kit should have plenty of seeds. These aren’t for eating, necessarily. The purpose of the seeds is to watch tiny new things grow. Very important in an existential crisis.

• Drums. Not sure you’re going to be ok? Say it with congas!

• Jigsaw Puzzles. If things ever get really bad, bread will be the new ten-dollar bill. Jigsaw puzzles will be the Benjamins.

• Awesome socks. An emergency is going to be bad by definition. Your choice, at that point, will be, “Do I want to experience this emergency in socks with skulls on them, or don’t I?”

• Paid YouTube. When I contemplate how the last two months have been, and then imagine that the whole time I might have been forced to watch ads between every video… I literally shuddered writing that.

• Peanuts. In case you need the crows on your side.

• Sourdough starter. But that was in our kit to begin with.

• Glitter glue. My one complaint about the CDC is that, when things started to get serious, no one warned us how badly we’d need art and craft supplies. From now on we’ll be keeping full stack of origami paper in both cars, and I’m going to get a mini paint set to keep on my bike at all times.