Sims Weekly World News

No one is ever prepared for disaster, especially one of global magnitude. If they tell you that they are, they are lying. You can stock up on supplies and you can make sure you have shelter but you are never emotionally or mentally prepared. When every modern convenience that you have taken for granted, such as internet, phone service and electricity is taken away, it changes you. You find out how resilient and resourceful you are. You either adapt or die.

Adapt is what we did.

Once we were fully settled there wasn’t much to do. Eventually all the books are read and you run out of ideas of things to paint. Believe it or not, there is such a thing to an animal as too much grooming and they will let you know about it. Fooseball gets boring after a time. You find other ways to occupy your time, and they have their repercussions…

Yes, even under the worst circumstances life goes on.

Back when we could still see the sun, Alistair and I talked about raising a family. We had everything planned out about when it was going to happen and how many children we would have. Once we moved underground I didn’t dwell on it. I hadn’t considered that children would be something that would be brought into the equation. Alistair had thought of this possibility though. The spare room that we had downstairs, the one that he kept locked and wouldn’t let me in, was a room outfitted for children. He really did think of everything. When I gave him the news this was the surprise he had for me.

I kept reminding myself that there was a time that there was no such thing as prenatal care and that women gave birth at home without a doctor present. It was a very strange idea to get used to. There would be no hospital, no doctor, no midwife. It would be just me and Alistair. I don’t know about my husband, but I was certainly glad that the pregnancy books we had (oh yes, in preparation of the worst we bought one of everything in the bookstore hoping that number of books would keep us busy) gave directions on what to do if you found yourself in labor and unable to get to the hospital for whatever reason.

Pregnancy did seem to make the days go by faster. Maybe it was the anticipation. The current situation didn’t dampen our excitement of adding a new family member. Pregnancy mood swings did send me into fits of gnome kicking. I never did find out where all those damned gnomes came from!

For the most part the pregnancy went smoothly. I didn’t think I had any problems and there was no way to know for sure if anything was wrong. I joked with Alistair that when given the choice, he should have taken the hospital up on it’s offer of employment and gone into medicine instead of forensics. There is a bit of a difference between marrying a doctor and marrying someone who can tell you how and when a person died just buy looking at them.

When the big day came we were presented with another surprise that we weren’t prepared for…twin boys. We named them Beans and George.

At this point we had no idea when we were sleeping, if it was day or night. If our sleep patterns weren’t messed up enough, now we were going to add the sleep schedule of not one, but two babies to the mix. At least we wouldn’t be bored any more…