Where were you yesterday when the earthquake hit. Now if you live in Colorado or on the east coast you might answer differently. It’s pretty odd that both Colorado and Virginia had earthquakes on the same day less than 6 hours apart. I called my Mom around 1pm and asked her if she heard about the earthquake and she said “well I was sleeping but I read about it in the blog”. I then said no Mom, the one on the east coast! She had not yet heard about this one but did ask “what’s going on with the world, it seems like it’s coming to an end”. I then pointed out how the word “prepare” is the most common word in the bible. (bet you didn’t know that!) Â She said “what’s there to prepare for if no one’s around?”. Sorry Mom for sharing your thoughts with all but I think it’s important as a lot of people probably have the same questions or concerns. First of all, relax, the world is not coming to an end, life will go on. What is going to change is how your life goes on. Many things can (and will) happen such as the economy crashing, natural disasters, (earthquakes, solar storms, flooding, longer colder winters and hotter summers, etc.) increased conflicts (war), civil unrest (riots) and so on. This is nothing new, every generation faces challenges like these it’s just that now with our global society and the advancements in technology, we’ve made a lot of the potential problems potentially much worse. Granted we can’t as easily do much about the weather (except stop generating so much greenhouse gas and pollution) but we can easily directly impact war, the economy, food riots, etc. The problem is mankind is so short sighted that we don’t look at the needs of all of mankind, just our own. So, what do we do about it? First, you pray. Next, you do as the bible says and prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Now what does prepare mean? Well it has a different meaning, depending on who you are and how bad you think it’s going to get. We know two of you that have a “Ship’s Store” that could tide you over for a bit….
You all know that the misses and I probably “prepare” more than most. The main reason for this is we have kids. Also most everything we buy are items we’re going to use anyhow. If we buy extra food, we know we’ll eat it sometime. If we stock up on toilet paper, we know we’ll be using that too! When we buy bandaids in bulk, we for sure know we’ll use them with 2 boys! Others of you feel more secure in our infrastructure than we do which leads you to believe you don’t really need to prepare. I think some of you think no matter what happens, you’ll always be able to go down to the corner grocery store and pick up some meat, milk and bread. You think it might cost more but you’ll always be able to drive a few miles, walk into a store and buy whatever you want. Worst case, you think if you can’t, it’ll be only a small interruption, like a few days until the stores are once agin fully stocked. Frankly we think you’re dead wrong, but you all need to decide for yourselves.
For those of you that live close to us (Grandma, Uncle T, Aunt B, Aunt Shelly) you have an advantage over the rest of you because we try to buy extra supplies when we can knowing that most you don’t. However this doesn’t mean we have everything we need to take care of everyone (it just costs too much, if we had the money, we most certainly would!) for all the problems that could potentially be headed our way. So, we strongly suggest (and hope) that you at a minimum, go buy some extra food, get some bottled water and stock up our your medications. (we’ve been doing this for years and have managed to accumulate 6-9 months worth of extra medicine by refilling ours every 20 days instead of 30) Another easy but necessary habit to get into is, always keep your gas tank at least half full. We’ve now conditioned ourselves to consider the half way mark the same as empty. Whenever we’re getting close to that mark, we fill up. If you can do these few simple things, you’ll be ahead of most people. See this isn’t so scary, you don’t need to go out and buy any gas masks or military rifles, just get a little extra food and water. If you’d like any further suggestions, please feel free to ask us. I don’t think most of you will, but I feel it’s my duty to at least suggest that you take basic precautions to help you through potential troubled times. If you think about all that’s happening, troubled times are ahead. In closing, please don’t think we’re a bunch of survivalists…….. as nothing could be further from the truth. There’s a big misconception about anyone who takes any precautions to protect their family or loved ones from obvious things that appear to be headed our way. There are a lot (millions of people in the U.S.) of people that “prepare”. Many are your doctors, teachers, and friends, you just don’t know it. And what about the government? Â The government is preparing like mad for every conceivable scenario like they’ve already run out of time! Here in Colorado they have created an underground compound topped with solar panels…we have been watching the non-stop construction for the last few years. Those of you that are older, remember back when you were a kid, I’ll bet your parents had months worth of canned foods and were prepared for all kinds of problems whether they needed to stitch up a pair of pants or stitch up a cut.
Speaking of labels, what about one Party labeling the Tea Party terrorists. Now I don’t consider myself a member of the Tea Party, but I think most of them are just regular people who are fed up with the runaway spending in Washington and the endless bickering among our self serving elected officials. (hmmm, maybe I am a member) Whatever you call them, they certainly are not terrorists. It’s really sad one group of Americans would label another group of Americans terrorists because they don’t agree with their politics. We’ve really come a long way people, nice. Another fine example of people working together.
Alright, I’ll try to skip politics tomorrow as I wrote so much today, thanks for sticking with me!
Ok, now to the day, Mom worked until 5pm and I picked the boys up at 2:45. We came home and all pitched in to clean up the house which was pretty much a mess. We stopped by Grandma’s around 4:45 on the way home from the bank. She was sitting outside on the phone. Both boys had another great day at school which is no surprise. They sure look good in their button down collared shirts. Everyone is still wearing shorts as it still hot with the temps in the mid 90’s. The little guy has a play date with his friend Scott after school today so we’ll be bringing 3 boys home. This for sure will make for some good stories tomorrow. I almost forgot, yesterday right before dinner, the little one came running in saying his brother just caught a big snake with his bare hands! Sure enough he had one by the tail and was holding it up for all to see. We made him walk down to the ditch and let it go. It wasn’t 5 minutes later and lo and behold, he had another one! The neighbor lady was thrilled as he was catching these in her yard and I think she feels the same about snakes as my Mom, iccckkk! We then all sat down for dinner which was some leftover green chili on brown rice, it was really good. Both boys are still sleeping in their own bed (primarily meaning the little one here) and taking showers every morning! (That’s a big one) We’re also using the threat of taking away some of their allowance if they don’t eat all their breakfast which seems to be working too.
Mom’s going to walk the boys to school again today, we might as well let them do this while they can before the snow comes. We might try to get to the gym this morning but the phone’s already ringing off the hook and Mom I know wants to get cleaning.
Hope everyone is doing well and isn’t too put off by the start of today’s post. I figured with the earthquakes, no better time to share my thoughts on preperation. Here’s a quote for the day, take care and God Bless,
“In the age of lies, even the clumsiest frankness is preferable to the best-orchestrated ruse.”