Kirsten Kowalewski has worked as a children’s librarian and school library media specialist. Currently she is a reviewer and editor for MonsterLibrarian.com. Kirsten has two children, ages 3 and 5, who you would NOT want to be boarded into a basement with during a zombie apocalypse.

Kirsten’s husband has asked her to make it very clear that this entry is a work of FICTION. Check back tomorrow (Yikes! Mother’s Day already) for our final Mother’s Day entry.

A Mom, A Plan, A Minivan

My husband is driving me crazy.

Every night he comes home from work, eats dinner, sinks into his recliner, and zones out in front of the television.  If the kids start jumping all over him, sometimes he’ll move to the couch, but even then I can’t tear him away from professional wrestling long enough to get him to talk about what’s going on.

He tells me that it’s just craziness on the Internet, that the media is just hyping things up, and that it’s no big deal, nothing to worry about.  He says not to get whipped up into hysteria by talking to my friends about what’s in the news.  Everything will be okay, he assures me.

Though even if it’s not okay, he says, even if it’s really happening, he doesn’t see why I need to get into the details. He bought a zombie survival kit off eBay, and he figures that if that doesn’t work, we’re toast, anyway.

Personally, I don’t appreciate his attitude.

I mean, I read the news. This zombie thing isn’t just showing up in wacko/conspiracy theory blogs or cheesy, obviously fake videos on YouTube. And it’s crossing political boundaries: I’ve seen stories on Fox News agreeing with articles in the New York Times.  I can’t watch the news feeds, though—the carnage is awful, and I just don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing.

Maybe if it was just me, I’d head to Costco and stock up on bottled water, canned goods, and toilet paper; I could board over the basement windows and hide out. It might even be an opportunity to spend quality time with the man I love. But…there are the kids. And there is no way in the world that we can stay cooped up in a boarded-up room, even a big one, with two kids under five with energy to burn who are capable of producing the kind of ear-splitting screams ours can, and one of whom isn’t potty trained.

Crap.

What happens if the zombies come and I run out of pull-ups? It’s too bad they have no sense of smell—otherwise I could just wave the stinky ones in front of them to drive them away.

I’ve talked with friends about loading up our minivans to form a caravan—strength in numbers—but I don’t know what we’d do when we run out of gas. Running out of gas on the highway seems like a bad idea, but if we stopped a gas station we could be walking into a trap…

Geez, maybe my husband has a point. I really sound paranoid.

But, if we were to do this, where could we go that’s far enough from the city to avoid the major zombie attack, but close enough that we won’t run out of gas?  Wherever it is, I kinda doubt we’ll find a Chick-fil-a , but hopefully we can manage a zombie-proof playground of some kind.

While we try to figure out where we’ll go, I’m making a list of stuff I think we’ll need to take. You can fit a lot of stuff in a minivan, especially if you’re good at packing. Guns make me nervous, even the toy ones, but I can pull an emergency survival kit together. Most of that stuff is in a basic first-aid kit (i.e. one with LOTS of bandages, adhesive wraps , painkillers, gauze, children’s Tylenol, a thermometer, tweezers, and a long list of other things I keep on hand for the sick and wounded), plus my son’s inhaler and my own meds. (I’m a little worried about what will happen when I run out of meds, so hopefully this will all be over before my three-month mail order supply is gone)  Soap, definitely, both solid and liquid (I see dishes and laundry probably being washed by hand); towels; underwear; toilet paper; pull-ups; a portable generator; water; extra gasoline; milk boxes and snacks for the kids; the GPS unit…there’s a lot to consider.

I really love my kids.  I don’t want to see them hurt, and I definitely don’t want them turning into zombies.  So I am taking in every single hug, every “I missed you, Mommy” to remember, just in case.

I wonder…do you think, if you were firm enough…would zombies sit quietly in timeout?