Watching Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Wisconsin....

The TruGreen man just knocked on my door, I told him we didn't want our lawn TruGreen, we like it the way it is, TruBrown.  Sorry, thats just not a priority in my life right now.  (Has it ever been?)

We went to the cannery yesterday, I feel extremely happy we did that.  Every day that goes by, I am feeling more urgent about food storage and other preparations.  I have been stopping by Goodwill at least every week, buying kids shoes for all different sizes, kids coats, baby girl clothing for my two due-in-July granddaughters.  

  I can't keep from thinking about President Kimball's statement, 

"I remember when the sisters used to say, 'Well, but we could buy it at the store a lot cheaper than we can put it up.' But that isn't quite the answer, is it?....Because there will come a time when there isn't any store."  (April 1974 Welfare Session.)

So I have been making a list of things that we would really suffer without.  If there were no stores open, and maybe the electrical grid is down, we would already want to own things such as shoes, coats, zero-degree sleeping bags, sewing machine needles, lantern mantles, bug spray.  

It cost us $50 to drive our van to and from Greensboro yesterday, the gas price at the pump was $3.11.  Now oil has shot up for the past two days, so of course gasoline will be much more expensive.  What if some day we can't even afford to drive to the cannery?

I keep watching all the countries in the Middle East rioting and governments falling and the way that all the oil producing countries hate us, and the spread of protests in America.  And the many pundits who are predicting that the dollar is going into hyperinflation.  And the severe crop freezes a couple of weeks ago in Mexico and Texas and California (lettuce was $2.99 at Harris Teeter today).  You realize, don't you, that there are food riots going on all over the world, just Google it.  Just because we can still afford the food, doesn't mean other nations can. (This photo was named "food riot in Algeria".)

Here are just three of the articles I found when I googled "food riots 2011":

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-07/world-risks-food-riots-as-grains-climb-economist-chalmin-says.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/food-riots-worldwide-2011-1

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/01/obama-orders-military-to-prepare-for-spring-food-riots/

I know you all hate my gloom and doom, but I say its time to get our houses in order and buy the necessities of life and get them stocked up in all your closets.  There are ten different scenarios that could all go kaboom at the same time, imagine if the New Zealand earthquake had happened here.  There is no telling how this could all play out.

We are told "if ye are prepared ye shall not fear."  I want to be totally prepared, and I want all my friends and family to be totally prepared also.