Looking forward to some calmness

So much happened last week...month? 

With the school shooting in Winder at the beginning of the month, and then the hurricane at the end of the month, we have felt like our phones have been just about blowing up with public safety alerts. We were very lucky to have so little damage in the storm. Our friends in Tallahassee didn't suffer too badly either. We can't say the same for our friends in Augusta and especially not for our friends in Asheville (though I did finally hear back from my friend Emily (who taught English in Voronezh with me) and she is, at least, safe. Asheville has been entirely cut off from the world—no roads, no internet. Western North Carolina was hit very hard. 

So we've been feeling like we're in a perpetual state of panic and/or mourning this month. 

*****

Naturally, the kids all skipped out to play outside once the hurricane blew over. The neighbourhood kids were all so happy to have had such a long weekend. The grown ups were all stressed out about trying to catch up on the work they'd put off (while attending to hours of household maintenance and childcare duties they weren't necessarily planning on (I mean, we always plan on having our kids at home while we work because that's our norm, but our neighbours typically send their kids to school when they work at home (perfectly valid); and none of us had really set time aside in our work calendars to prep for a hurricane, you know? That's outside of our normally scheduled week). What I'm trying to say is...that we sent Phoebe outside to play under the supervision of her older siblings. 

Naturally, they eventually abandoned her because—let's face it—babies can get kind of boring. So the kids were all playing together and then Phoebe was just...exploring the yard on her own. 

I was downstairs in the basement, helping Rachel get through some end-of-the-week panic (she recently started her semester at BYU-I (online) and was feeling overwhelmed (due in no small part to the sense of impending doom we'd all been facing for days while we watched this hurricane grow and grow and grow)), but we're not entirely negligent parents. Andrew peek outside to check on how things were going and saw the kids all running around in the cul-de-sac and Phoebe...

Naturally, Phoebe was putting stuff into her mouth. 

This child! I have said it before and I'll say it again—I have never had a child put so many things in their mouth! Just...everything goes in there! All the time! It's been an ongoing battle for years at this point.

Anyway, she was just munching on pokeberries. 

Which are poisonous.

Andrew ran out to her and she was just covered in pokeberry juice. He told her to spit and brought her in and washed her off and started interrogating her.

She showed no remorse.

Literally none.

You can see her purple chin and purple fingers. Andrew took off her shirt to treat the stains. I called poison control (once again, my own little PSA for y'all—don't hesitate to call poison control because they are the nicest people on the face of the planet).

Phoebe said that she'd only eaten one berry but that she spat it out because it was yucky, which the call-taker seemed to feel was a positive sign (though with the amount of berry juice on Phoebe's shirt...it sure seemed like more than one berry). 

"She'll probably just get a tummy ache. She may even vomit a time or two. Anything beyond, like, five times would be cause for alarm and you should consider taking her in to the ER, but I don't think you'll have any problems. You can let her eat and drink whatever she'd like, put her to bed as normal."

So evidently pokeberries are poisonous but not, like super poisonous. 

Phoebe was just fine (thank goodness).

But then! At about 5:00 on Sunday morning a chemical plant (Rockdale County Biolab) in Conyers (about 25 miles away from us) had a fire/explosion with a water-reactive chemical. That means that water causes this (unknown to us) chemical to ignite. And then there were multiple reactions that caused more fires and more explosions and...a big billowing plume of nastiness was released into the sky. The EPA was monitoring for chlorine and other gasses in the area. 

That unleashed a whole new onslaught of Public Safety Alerts on our phones. We kept our windows closed and haven't really gone outside to play or go on walks. And...who knows? Maybe October will be different. Calmer. Less full of emergencies. 

*****

Zoë gave a family night lesson on emergency preparedness last night. We talked about our fire evacuation plan. We talked about various natural disasters and were treated to a lovely diorama of a hurricane and house fire. 

And because the Red Cross Kids website (where she did the bulk of her research) included proper handwashing technique in their emergency preparedness section, we also got a lesson on how to properly wash our hands. And then she took us each into the bathroom to grade us! She had a checklist and everything.

When I was finished drying my hands she said, "I knew you'd get a B."

"Only a B!!" I exclaimed (if you know, you know). "What did I miss?!"

"Nothing," she said. "You did everything perfectly. You wet your hands, you scrubbed in the soap for 20 seconds, singing through 'Happy Birthday' twice, you made sure to wash the fronts and backs of your hands up to your wrists, you cleaned under your fingernails, you rinsed well, you dried. It was perfect."

"Then why a B?" I asked. 

"Oh, I made up my own grading scale. B is for 'Best.'"

Four family members got Bs (Andrew and I, along with Rachel and Miriam). Alexander got a C for "could use some work" because he forgot to get his hands wet before getting soap. Benjamin got a D for "well, that was different" because he took a drink from the faucet in the process of washing his hands. Phoebe passed on baby merit alone. 

It was a pretty good lesson. We also did some breathing exercises to help us feel calm (the Red Cross has a video on this, too), which is important to do when you've been through an emergency. Taking a moment to clear our heads and just breathe (the air filled with diluted chlorine gas???) was probably something we all needed to do, so I'm glad Zoë thought to include that in her lesson.