“So, are you saying if we can figure the money part of it out, you’d be willing to start stockpiling supplies?” His eyes lit up for the first time since we had started discussing this insane proposal. I knew the money side would end the plan, but I didn’t have the heart to dash his hopes just yet.
“Yes, Baby, but I really want to know more about why you think this is so important. I mean, don’t take this wrong, but you are starting to sound like one of those conspiracy theory whackos.”
He grinned at me. “I’m glad you asked. Take a look at these sites.” He pulled out his laptop and starting hitting bookmarked pages.
****
We spent the next few hours going through pages and pages of news sites (not mainstream by any means), blogs, forums, even some social media pages. Russ became more and more animated and agitated as we read.
“From everything I’ve read, it’s no longer a matter of ‘if’ something could happen. It’s a matter of ‘when’ it will. We need to get started on this right away, honey. The longer we wait, the less time we have to build up our supplies.”
“Okay, hold up a second. You said ‘supplies’, not food. Are you talking about more than just edibles and water?”
He nodded and said, “Yes, there’s more to this than just food and water. We need medical supplies, emergency blankets, buckets and mylar bags to extend the life of the food, and books – lots of informational books.”
“Books on what? And what are mylar bags?”
“Mylar bags are used for extending the life of food in storage. The main ways food is affected by long-term storage is through heat, light, moisture, oxygen, and rodents. Mylar bags help in all of these areas and with the addition of oxygen absorbers and food grade buckets, in the right environment, we can store food for years. Take a look.”
Imagine that – he had bookmarks for those, too. I had to admit, he had done the research. He showed me images of people’s basements and spare rooms with stacks of pristine white buckets. My inner OCD gremlin was giggling with delight. I smiled and looked at my husband who was grinning like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Damn him – he knew if he showed me pics where everything was organized it would soften me up. But I still had questions.
“Fine, I’ll admit it. That doesn’t look too bad. We can come back to it later. Now, what books are you talking about? You know books take up a lot of space and are heavy as hell when you get a pile of them.”
He was still grinning. “That’s your department. We can take one of your ereaders and load it up with ebooks. We need reference books on first aid, edible plants, food preservation, carpentry – I made a list.”
He pulled up a doc on his laptop that looked really long. “Why do we need all that? It’s not like hospitals would disappear into thin air. If we’re buying food, why do we need to know about the other stuff?”
He shook his head. “You still aren’t seeing the whole picture, Anne. When you prep, you get ready for anything that could happen. What if the New Madrid fault created an earthquake like it did 200 years ago? It could happen, and no one can predict that. We could be cut off from roads that before had gotten us to a hospital if we needed it. Not only that, a quake could and would take out power lines. This area could be powerless for months. What would you do if one of us was hurt and we couldn’t get to a doctor? We need to aim for as much self-sufficiency as we can achieve.”
“Well, even in ebook format, that list could cost hundreds of dollars. I don’t think we can swing that any time soon. I don’t know that we can do any of this right now, Russ.” There we go. Back to the money we didn’t have to spend.
“We’ll get to the money in a minute. Get your tablet.” He looked pretty smug. I knew he was up to something. I stepped inside and grabbed my tablet off the dining room table. All my gadgets within arm’s reach, that’s how I roll. When I got back to the sun room and sat down, he said, “Go to Amazon. Go to the Kindle store. Type ‘free survival books’ in the search.” I followed his instructions and got a return of 42 pages. Wow, that’s a lot of books. While not all of them were actually free, many were, and there were a bunch of fiction novels that were free. Score! I was clicking Buy now with 1-Click as fast as my index finger could go. He laughed. “Okay, okay, you can get back to that later. There are some pages you can follow on Facebook that list freebies every day, some specific to survival, homesteading, that sort of thing.”
“What’s homesteading?” I asked, as I clickity-click-clicked away. I was in heaven.
“Raising animals like chickens and goats, for food. Planting gardens. Becoming self-sustaining. That’s the goal, Anne. We don’t want to have to depend on anyone to survive if everything goes to hell.”
“Baby, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we don’t live in the country. We have an acre of yard, not a farm.” Tap, tap, tap.
“We can have chickens and rabbits. We can plant a garden. We can start working on these things now, Anne. It wouldn’t take much at all to build a rabbit hutch and a chicken pen. We can rent a tiller for a day to put in a garden.”
I looked up and sighed. “All of which cost money, Russ. I don’t know how you think we are going to pay for all of these things you want to do. Maybe if one of us gets a raise next year we could set that aside for some of these projects.” Fat chance. Russ worked for a maintenance supply house and I was a bookkeeper for a small company. Yes, we made an honest wage, but neither of those jobs were the kind you could climb the ladder to make killer money.
“Okay. You keep bringing it up, so let’s deal with it. Where will the money come from; that’s your argument now, right? If we could afford it, you’d be willing to do this with me; is that what you’re saying?”
I felt like he was setting me up for a trap. I tried to quickly analyze any way this conversation could go against me. No, I was good. I built our budget. I knew what was there. We barely had an extra 50 dollars left at the end of the month, and usually not even that. There’s no way he can change what we have coming in and going out. I jumped in with both feet.
“Yep, that’s what I’m saying. If we had the money, we could start working on this plan. But, we don’t have it, Baby. You’ve seen the budget. We’re stretched pretty thin.”
He opened a spreadsheet on his laptop. “Then I propose a new budget.”
What???
chapter 3
I looked at his “new” budget. I was not happy. The line for Lunches had been reduced from 200 dollars a month to 80. I attacked that one first.
“There is no way the two of us can eat lunch for a month on what it costs us to eat for a week now. Hell, it’s hard to keep it to five dollars a day. Eating out is getting more and more expensive.”
“Yes, it is, and that’s why we’re going to stop doing it. We’re going to start taking our lunch to work. I left enough so that we can eat out on Fridays.” How generous of you! But wait, I had more ammo.
“If we start taking our lunch, the grocery numbers will need to go up. We’ll have to buy food that can be cooked in the microwave, or make sandwiches which will entail more of those foods. It comes back up somewhere else, Baby. We still have to buy food at some point.” Ha! Argue that one!
“We’re also going to change the way we cook. If we make meals that will feed us more than once, like stew or spaghetti, we can take leftovers for lunch. We just make a little more to cover it. It will be pennies difference, not dollars. How many times have you thrown out the last of whatever we had for supper because there wasn’t enough for another meal for all three of us? We can take what’s left of it, throw it in a plastic container – which you have piles of, by the way – and stick it in the freezer. Then, we just grab one out and take it for lunch. It can thaw during the morning. You wouldn’t even need a lunch bag.”
Dammit. He’d really thought about all of this. I looked at his budget and spied my next argument. “But you haven’t added anything to the grocery budget. In fact, it looks like you reduced it by
80 dollars! How do you figure that would work?”
“Because we’re going to stop picking something up on the way home two or three nights a week, Honey. We’re limiting eating out to once a week, which can either be going out some place that’s not too expensive or ordering pizza. We eat too much crap anyway. If we cook it here, we know what’s in it, and we can cook it healthier.”
Who said I wanted to eat healthy?? And who was going to do all this new cooking? I was getting mad. “So now I get to work all day, drive 30 minutes to get home in rush hour traffic, then spend another hour on my feet cooking supper when I get home? Not to mention, cleaning up the kitchen after we eat. Oh yeah, I’m loving this plan.” There was my sarcastic mom’s gene. I was NOT on board, at all.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying, either. I’ve done a lot of reading on meal planning. We can spend a few hours one Sunday a month and prepare meals for pretty much the whole month. If we grocery shop to cook that way, we won’t be stopping at the store on the way home a couple of nights a week to ‘pick something up for supper’. Since we’ll be taking leftovers for our lunches, we’ll be making those up in advance as well. We can do this, Anne. I’m not saying it will be easy. We will pretty much have to change our lifestyles. But, if we do it together, it will be worth it to have some security for the future, for any future life throws at us. Just give it a chance, that’s all I ask.”
I still wasn’t sold, but I love my husband and he was asking me – not telling, asking – to give this crazy prepper thing a shot. I couldn’t deny the facts he had presented about disasters that had happened in our country where people died waiting for the government to help. Having experienced firsthand as a child that even if someone can help, they may not make you or your family a top priority, meant you had to do that yourself. I slowly nodded, smiled, and leaned over to kiss him.
“Fine Let’s see what else I’m giving up for this escapade. Show me the rest of your budget.”
****
As it turned out, I didn’t have to give up much more. The 200 dollars he had gleaned in the food areas was sufficient. We earmarked it for Preps, and made sure we spent that much every month. Within six months, we had a nice pile of supplies. I say pile, because it was piled up everywhere we could find a spot. One rainy Saturday, I stood in the doorway to my walk-in closet twitching at the sight of boxes and buckets piled up in the corner. I went in search of the one who started all this. I found the culprit in the garage, building a rabbit hutch. He heard me walk in and stood up from his work.
“What do you think? We get a buck and a doe (yes, by now I knew those terms were used for more than just deer), keep them separated until we want babies and voila – fresh meat!”
“Question, Farmer Russ: do you know anything about cleaning game? You’ve never hunted as long as we’ve been together. My dad used to hunt, but I never went with him, and I wasn’t really into the whole guts and gore that goes along with preparing the meat, although I do love me some venison and squirrel.”
“Yeah, my uncle took me when I was a kid. It’s been a while, but I think I can handle it. Just don’t let Rusty name them.” Too late. He was already planning to call them Roger and Jessica.
“Well, the reason I’m here is we need to make a decision about where we are going to put all this…stuff. It’s everywhere, Russ. This disorganization is driving me crazy.”
He walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and started guiding me back inside. “I think I know what we can do, if you’re open to it. Let me show you.”
And that’s how I lost my craft room. Not that I had been really crafty the past six months. I was a novice quilter, but had a sewing machine, cutting table, all kinds of gadgets, and a really nice stash of material and fat quarters. I crochet, so I had yarn tucked everywhere. I went through a jewelry making phase, so I had a bunch of that stuff. My craft room was messy, but neat – like I had just been in there creating some gorgeous something yesterday. Except after six months of being ignored, the dust bunnies had taken up residence and were claiming property rights.
Russ suggested we open up the area in front of one wall so we could put up some shelving. I heartily agreed. I’d rather give up some contained space in there over spots all over the house. Within another six months, my sewing machine, cutting table, and some storage items would be relocated to the bonus room so we could add more shelves for preps. While I snickered at Russ losing some space in his man cave, honestly, I was happy to make the changes. The more I had read and researched, the more I became like-minded with Russ that what we were doing was more important than any other hobbies or activities. I think I became more obsessed with it each day, trying to think of things we might need if we couldn’t run to the store to get them. I looked at items while shopping in a whole new way. Is this something I would need if I couldn’t get it, and how else can I use it?
I got daily emails from half a dozen freebie ebook lists and scoured my Facebook feed for more, especially homesteading and how-tos. I had over 400 books loaded on one ereader specific to SHTF, of which about 98% had been downloaded for free. The rest were around a buck.
I hit the dollar store at least once a month, stocking up on things like matches, emergency candles, aluminum foil, bleach – anything I could think we might need. I got into food preservation HARD and dehydrated or vacuum sealed everything.
We bought all kinds of guns, with thousands of rounds of ammo. I loved going to the range to shoot; probably because I was good at it. I passed my concealed carry permit test with a perfect score. There’s just something about having all that power in your hand, sending the bullet down range, and seeing it take out the X in the middle of the target. One of the best feelings I know of right there. We never left the house without a side arm, and we didn’t go anywhere that posted “No Guns Allowed”. Why would we patronize and support a business that wanted to make us a target for some psycho shooter who, by the way, would see that place as a target rich environment?
We had bug out bags packed and ready to go. I hated the thought of having to leave though. All of our preps were here. Thousands of dollars’ worth of things we’d need if the world went terribly wrong. How could we think of leaving all of it? That aside, where would we go? It’s not like you’re going to just run out into the woods and camp in your car or something. Things would be insane. People would be going crazy. We needed a bug out location, but we absolutely did not have the finances for that. Russ had started his own maintenance business, which was doing quite well, but not nearly well enough for us to take on another mortgage payment.
We talked about it a lot. That was the missing part of our plan. If we had to leave, because things got too bad here, where would we go? Where could we go?
****
When we started prepping, we told Rusty he couldn’t tell ANYONE about it. You know what people say when they find out you’re a prepper? “Well, if something happens, I’ll just come to your house.” And they probably would. But we weren’t prepping for everyone. We were prepping for our family. The longer any event lasted, the longer we would need the supplies, and if you’re sharing with the whole block, a year’s worth of food for a family of three becomes about a month’s worth of food for 30 people. No one ever looks at it that way, at least not the ones who don’t stock up on supplies. Those are the folks who run to the grocery store to buy milk, bread, and toilet paper when they forecast snow in Tennessee. They never plan past the next few days.
When we told Rusty he couldn’t say anything, the first words out of his mouth were, “What about Ben?” Crap. The Hoppers. We completely forgot about our best friends.
Ben and Rusty had been buddies since second grade. We met Bob and Janet, Ben’s parents, in the yard the day we moved in. They lived next door. We became fast friends and spent many weekends at each other’s house, cooking, eating, drinking, and laughing. We had gone on vacations together and had been invited to the farm owned by Janet’s aunt and uncle, Millie and Monroe Wa
rren. The farm was like going back in time, back to a slower, quieter moment in history.
I was worried that Bob and Janet would think we had lost our minds with all this prepping business, but how could we keep it from them? They knew our house as well as we knew theirs. They’d see the supplies. They’d ask what they were for, and why there was so much. Even more than that, if something happened, we would absolutely want them with us, whether we were bugging in or out. We had to tell them but more important: we had to convince them to join us.
We invited them over for dinner that Saturday. After stuffing ourselves beyond reason on steak, potatoes, salad, and bread, we sent the boys up to play video games (like that was a problem), and told Bob and Janet we needed to talk to them. Bob, our consummate joker, took on a serious expression.
“Are you breaking up with us? Are you pregnant, Russ? Did Ed McMahon show up at YOUR door with OUR check?”
Janet elbowed her husband as we laughed. “Hush, and let them talk. Seriously, is something wrong? What can we do to help?”
Russ smiled. “No, nothing’s wrong. We need to tell you about something we started doing, because we want you to do it with us. You guys are our family, and we couldn’t imagine a life of any kind without you in it.”
They both looked puzzled so Russ started telling them everything, showing them the web pages he had shown me, explaining why he thought this was important; so important, we wanted them to be involved.
Bob got serious as he looked through the sites, a rarity for him. “Dude, this is some freaky shit. I’ve always blown it off when I heard or saw anything about it, but when you look at it like this…and you guys are doing this? You’re…what did you call it…prepping?”
I smiled at him. “Yeppers, we’re preppers. We’re just getting started, but c’mon, let me show you what we have so far.”
Before the Power was Gone: A Powerless World Series, Book 0.5 Page 2