No power? No problem!

It scares me how little we as a culture know about taking care of ourselves.  The average town has about 3 days worth of supplies in the case of an emergency.  3 days!  Can you imagine the chaos?  I must have at least 3 weeks worth of food in my larder.  And that's not counting the freezers.

The power went out today unexpectedly, for a number of hours.  It was starting to get chilly so I built a nice fire.  Then I boiled some water on top and made tea and some eggs for lunch.

I wanted to read but, of course, there was no light.  But it was a nice sunny day, so I went outdoors.  Cold?  No problem, dress warm!  I had a great time on the back deck reading Joel Salatin's Folks, this ain't normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World.

Good book.  Good tea.  Good times.

"When a child plays a video game, if the race car wrecks, in a few seconds the game gives him a new one and he goes right on playing...No one, at any other time in human history, has been able to replace their materials, their tools, their playthings with such instant fabrication or resurrection.  Life is not like this at all...If your tomato plant dies because you failed to water it, you don't count to ten and watch a miraculous resurrection."

Like Joel, it makes me scared and sad that people think there are an endless supply of tomatoes.  Who grows those tomatoes?  Do you know where they came from?  If there was suddenly no more oil to transport them from California (or to make pesticides), what would you do? 

What did I spend the afternoon doing?  Not shopping for out-of-season tomatoes.  Not playing video games.  Though both of those activities aren't inherently bad.  It's when people are dependent on them that scares me.

Nope, I sorted my old clothespins.  Took out the rotten and broken ones.  Sat in the warm sunshine and thought about spring and fresh laundry.  Ahh....delayed gratification.