Preparing for Sandy

So, here we are again. Storm prep.

The subways will shut at 7pm tonight - this has already been announced -  it takes many hours to close the enormous system.We won't be going anywhere for a couple of days, unless on foot and in rainboots. Vince will be working at home.

The moving of pots began in the night, with wind gusts buffeting the terrace edges and the climbing roses squealing horribly against the aluminum gutter. Vince went out and brought down the fig. The fig is always the first. It has the greatest sailing capacity due to its long arms. Most of the other pots are now also on the terrace floor, under chairs, on and under table. The roof farm has been battened down, the beaded African guard sheep brought to the landing, along with deck chairs and tomato tee pees.

The cat is fascinated. The big pots on the terrace edge are waiting for the heavy lifting muscles of the Frenchman who is, as we speak, on his second shopping trip, the first keeping him in a line that wrapped around the girth of Key Food...

We have everything we need for a melting pot of meals: pad thai, ancho-spiced tacos, pizza, chicken cordon bleu (eaten first if the electricity goes), a multitude of egg dishes, salade Lyonnaise (since Vince bore home what I'm sure he thought was arugula but which turns out to be giant dandelion leaves), rice this way and that, and beans, beans, good for your heart.

We'll need beer - for us and for the slugs that I know will invade the new grazing grounds that we have helpfully brought down to the gravel. Wine. Maybe gin for a Baybreaker: A predicted 11 foot storm surge will surely cover that sand bar that is the Rockaways at Fort Tilden (Frank's Beach Farm). Jamaica Bay, its wildlife refuge, the strange beach-like community at Broad Channel, some houses on stilts in the water - they are in for a rough time, but are perhaps leaving already, as they lie in evacuation zone A (all dark orange on the linked map). Live storm prep updates are available at the New York Times' City Room.

This mandatory evacuation zone includes our local stomping grounds of Red Hook, and Dumbo; as well as Coney Island, the waterfront edges of Sunset Park, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn, parts of Manhattan along both the Hudson and East Rivers south of Midtown, most of coastal Staten Island, the already-mentioned Rockaways and parts of Long Island City in Queens and poor little City Island in the Bronx, near Pelham Bay.

For apartment life - we still have a case of water from Never-Happened-Irene, last August. We have flashlights, we have a nice handcranked/solar-powered radio (a gift from a WNYC pledge drive), we have portable entertainment (le chat noir) and he has plenty of food. We have freshly-charged camera batteries. Piles of them. We have an oil lamp and candles. We do not have cards. Maybe this is the time to learn to play poker? Can the cat hold a hand?

We are on the top floor and, though close to the water of New York Harbor, on a hill (by New York standards, at any rate) so we won't go floating anywhere.

We may leak, though.

Happy storm, New York. Hold on tight. Don't linger beneath callery pear trees.

3.30pm Super-local panic shopping update from the Frenchman:

Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable - double line backed up to the beer fridges in the rear
Trader Joe's - doors closed and only opened to let one shopper in when another exits
Pacific Gourmet - lines on the sidewalk, taking cash only to pay on the sidewalk