A day of rest

Since I last posted life has been busy. The my back aches, my feet hurt and my head is going to go ‘splodey kind of busy. I originally had a joke about my husband’s work exploding here but Cave’s work really did explode today, (literally, a tank blew it’s top) but it’s under control and he’s fine, although the kids are bummed that he won’t be home in time for dinner. He’s bummed that he was attending to duties elsewhere so was locked down there and unable to respond. *eyeroll* Boys.

As an example, yesterday we assembly lined 18 more buckets of food into our storage. AP flour, bread flour, beans, rice, and sugar are mylar sealed with o2 removers. I turned a couple of pounds of pumpkin into 18 jars of canned squashy goodness, and I’ve also been seasoning some new to me cast iron, I’m fixing to finish that up today. And so I have. I’m still waiting on the new powerhead for my dehydrator or I’d have a load of buck turning into jerky too.

This morning I woke up to find the lady preppers on my facebook abuzz about how the price of groceries is expected to about double in October. It’s worrisome, but not unexpected what with the poor harvest. What’s more disconcerting to me is that I’ve recently discovered some rather large holes in our storage supplies. See, my husband handles procuring the supplies, I just tell him what we need to keep on hand. Unfortunately he has approached it from a non-cooks perspective, so while I’ve been listing powdered milk, shortening and other basic ingredients he looked upon those as “luxuries” during an emergency and has been buying things that he understands, like dry soup and just add water types of things. His mindset has been adjusted and he now has a core list of things to buy before anything else until we’re caught up. I hope we can get caught up in time.

So, I’m going to go chew some things over, watch Jeremiah Johnson, and fry up some lunch in my newly seasoned Piqua Ware no. 5. I’ve already had four pancakes through it and they’re skating around nicely in it. I’m hoping to make up a post about seasoning cast iron later this week, possibly today if the kids cooperate.

Talk to you later.

A contest to enter

I like to win things, and I’m sure that you do too, so head on over to Modern Day Redneck and leave a comment. You just might win a new Zombie T-shirt.

What would you have done?

Right now I’m elbows deep in the final processing of this gorgeous guy:

He still had grass in his mouth. My friend thinks he’s an old buck because he says his teeth are missing. I’m not so sure, he’s not really familiar with deer and their dentition so I think he was looking at the gap that doesn’t have teeth. By the time I thought to check I was unable to get his jaw open so we’re going to have to wait until after the insects have had their way with the skull.

The meat has been aging under ice in my coolers for a few days and finally felt ready tonight. I’ve already cut the backstraps into steaks and I saved some of the neck for soup but he was about not very tender so the majority is being sliced for jerky. It’s taking a bit of doing but I’m almost done. I just have the right fore and rib cage left to process. The dogs are so stuffed full of trim that they can barely stay awake long enough to lift their heads. Oh, and I’m not taking the fact that he’s tough as an indication of age, I’ve found even young bucks get chewy once they get a good case of testosterone poisoning.

While my hands have been busy my mind has been wandering. I’ve never drawn my weapon in self defense, but I’ve been reviewing some things that happened fairly recently that were uncomfortable. Since scenario review is something a lot of people like to do, I thought I’d share. Opinions and suggestions are welcome. 

Situation 1:

Last spring we were at the local BigBox Vision Center buying new glasses for Monster Girl. She’s a beautiful 10 year old child and the technician was complimenting her on how pretty her eyes were, then it was her hair (it’s long, she’s never had her hair cut) and then he kept asking her to turn around so he could see the butterflies embroidered on her back pockets (he did this at least three times) and telling her how cute they were and how pretty she was, did she wear make-up etc. I saw red flags flying all over throughout the conversation. One of them being that when he was doing the store spiel he was using a normal tone of voice but when he was complimenting her or asking her to turn he was using a very quiet voice. I assumed so it wouldn’t be picked up by the surveillance. Another was that he waited until I appeared distracted with my other children or my phone before he said anything, not realizing that I was texting the things he was saying to my husband and that as a mother I can pay attention to several things at once. When I didn’t give him any indication that I’d heard, he started saying more and more things to her.

Unfortunately it was closing time and he had already sent the other technician home before we started the process otherwise I would have asked someone else to take over. When it came time for me to give him our personal information I handed him my concealed permit and told him he could copy the information off of that. He looked at it, then back at me, and said “Oh…you have a gun?” I replied “several, and I carry them 24/7.” I also made sure to hold my elbow in such a way as to allow my XD to clunk against the chair when I leaned back, and I did not remove my eyes from him for the rest of the time we were there. He processed the transaction, handed everything back, said they should be here in 7-10 business days, they’ll call when they’re in, and got up and left without looking at me or my daughter again. He was in such a hurry that he made several mistakes and they had to refigure the bill when the glasses came in.

I would like to point out that I didn’t say anything directly because he hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be played off as a misunderstanding, nor did I feel that he had done anything prosecutable. I got the feeling that everything he said and did was carefully managed with that in mind. I believe that my message was received loud and clear though. I also didn’t want to scare or upset my daughter. Later I asked her what she thought about him and she said she thought he was weird because he liked the embroidery, but she didn’t seem to have picked up on the creepy vibe. We had a discussion about inappropriate attention and she was able to pick out some of the red flags when she thought about it. She’s starting to pay attention because when we were at a different store a few weeks back she whispered “Mom, that man is looking at you” and I looked and caught some guy reading my t-shirt.

I spoke to the manager of the vision center about creepy guy the next day, who told me that he was from a different store and was just filling in while someone was on vacation but she made some phone calls and he was taken off of her schedule. I don’t know if further action was taken.

Situation 2:

I babysit twin girls that live in my neighborhood. One day the girls were in their room playing and I was walking into the kitchen when I saw a car I did not recognize with a driver whom I did not know pulling into their driveway. I went outside immediately and stood, hands on hips, right in front of the driver side door so he couldn’t open it. He had the wrong house and I sent him on his way with a nope, no one here by that name, no I don’t know where that house is, it’s time to go now. Not even ten minutes later I got a call from the mother I was sitting for, he was looking for a mutual friend of ours (we all know her by her middle name and I didn’t recognize the name he was using for her) and she called the mom to let her know how funny he thought it was that I wouldn’t let him out and how afraid I was of him. He assumed that I was afraid because he is a large, muscular guy full of tattoos. I did get a warm fuzzy feeling when I heard that the lady he was looking for told him that it was highly doubtful that I was afraid and he was smart to have stayed in the car because “She doesn’t play around.” Considering she’s a deputy sheriff in the next county over I take that as a compliment.

I’ve procrastinated enough, back to the task of filleting the silverskin off and slicing the jerky. *sigh*

Can we export them to Canada?

I found this on whotalking, a website that searches for key phrases being used in social media, mostly twitter and facebook, while I was helping out a local to me blog. I found it quite disgusting.

I took the liberty of looking the poster and his wife up on facebook. They don’t appear to be criminals, drug users or dealers, nor do they seem to be scamming the system but the fact that they turned down section 8 housing indicates to me that they are on the dole.They also appear to focus almost exclusively on entertainment and feeling bad because they don’t have enough money. His profile picture is of a collection of more than a dozen nerf guns, several of which I’ve seen in the store for $40 or more. He has broadcast for a ride to work half an hour before he’s supposed to be there, appealed to facebook for someone to cover his shift because he had an upset stomach, and he has passed on to his facebook friends that he’s both looking for a rental in the $500-$550 range and that he and his family are looking for a roommate to pay $550 in rent.

I don’t think he’s working to better himself or his situation, unless spending money you don’t have to feather your nest with toys, games, and other things that you can’t afford and don’t need while depending on a roommate or parents to pay your bills is the new bettering yourself. They’re in their thirties yet they’re acting like teenagers and thinking like parasites. Get over the lifestyle you think you’re entitled to have, sell your stuff instead of storing it, get a moped for cheap work transportation, move into housing that fits your income, and work your ass off to get you and your family out of there. Don’t ask your parents, roommate, friends or fellow taxpayers to subsidize your needs so you can focus on your wants, and every single thing he listed is a want. Get your priorities straightened out. Listen to the grown ups trying to tell you what to do instead of telling them to shut up and take care of you. Set aside your childish attitudes and be the man your family needs you to be.

I really fear for the future of our country.