So, after eighteen hours without power and five inches of water in our basement, we are now officially high and dry in Central New Jersey. By "we," I mean "Mouse and He-Mouse," because many other people are still dealing with awful mud and our favorite park is entirely underwater. It was pretty awful. The power went out at 2:30 a.m., and the worst of the storm struck around 4. We had a long, sleepless, worried night as our basement filled with water and there was nothing we could do about it. So I wanted to share the things I learned from Hurricane Irene, because they turned out to be little parables that can be applied to life in general.

1) It's all you
Living in an apartment is nice, because when you live in a house, there is nobody to call when your basement is full of water, except your Huz.

2) Get started
Nobody but you is going to muck out all that water, so you may as well do it now, and the longer you wait, the worse it is going to smell. Even if it means more work in the long run, getting started will make you feel better.

3) Be organized
It may not seem important to sweep the basement now, but when basement muck is floating by on rainwater, you will be really excited to know it does not contain spiders/icky grease/pebbles and hair that are going to clog your drain or stop your sump pump from pumping.

4) Prepare for the worst
Because sure, it may just be one inch of water. But if it's six, that entire box of books that you set on the floor is toast. As in reduced to dripping, stinking, blocks of pulp with pages that don't ever come apart again. Don't store shit in your basement AT ALL, said our handyman. But if you have to, stack it at least six inches off the ground on pieces of wood. Never put upholstered furniture in your basement at all. Trust me.

5) Always have a back-up plan
Sump pumps and wet/dry shop vacs are fantastic, but guess what? Both run on electricity. I want a battery-operated sump pump or a small, one-outlet emergency generator. I do not care if all of the food in my fridge goes bad,* but dammit, I want that sump pump to pump.

6) Kill bad stuff early
It is easier to spray too much bleach on everything than it is to get rid of mold once it already has a heartbeat.

7) Go ahead and splurge on galoshes
Because not only are they cute, but they will be a really good thing to have when you're crouching on your basement floor, frantically bailing water by flashlight using a dustpan. Look at my cute red galoshes!, you will think, as you see them through the murky water. Meanwhile, your Huz, who has taped garbage bags over his feet, will be muttering under his breath as the water/sewage slowly seeps into his shoes because he decided he didn't want to spend the money on galoshes. Just buy the damn galoshes. May I recommend Kamiks, which are only $55 and are cuter than Hunters?

8) Don't let people get between you and what you know you need to do
I am a worrier, nice mice. This may be because Mama Mouse was an American Red Cross disaster responder in the mid-1990s, and saw the worst of Hurricanes Andrew, Floyd, and Iniki, not to mention the midwest floods. The lesson she learned from this was one she repeated to me with great frequency: you know the long list of stuff they tell you to do when a disaster is going to happen? DO ALL OF THOSE THINGS. I mean, yes, sometimes you won't really need five gallons of water per person. Sometimes you won't need all that canned food. Sometimes your power won't go out, and you won't need your battery operated radio.** Sometimes, they will tell you to evacuate and you will come back and nothing will have happened to your house at all, and you will think, well shit, I could've been in my own bed this whole time instead of stuck in traffic. But you know what? All of this is better than ignoring the instructions, because ignoring the instructions is how you get killed. That's what I learned from Mama Mouse. So I stockpile, and I listen to evac orders, and I listen to the storm news. And people roll their eyes, and say it won't be a problem, and tell me I'm overreacting. But you know what? Those same people always want my bottled water. So just do the shit you know you need to do.

* By the way, it takes 72 hours for the food in your fridge to go bad. It takes about two hours, in Hurricane Irene, for your basement to fill up with water if the sump pump isn't working.

** Which is only $10, by the way, and which was our only source of information during our long, dark night.