Summer's last blast

We went to Sea World in San Antonio yesterday.

I think the boys had a good time, but I might be getting too mature for such doings; my fanny is tired from sitting in the car for 7 hours, and my feet hurt from walking around in flip-flops for 8 hours.

The shows were pretty great. We saw the new one, Azul, that has dolphins, beluga whales, and different varieties of tropical birds as part of it. We saw the Believe show with Shamu. We couldn't tell which one was Shamu, but it was fun to see the new baby orca there with her mother. The narrator of the show said the baby whale was born this past January. I noticed that none of the trainers actually got in the water with the orcas and I wonder if that's a new policy for Sea World since one of them was drowned by a whale earlier this year. We sat in the "splash zone" for every show but didn't get so much as a drop of water until we went to the Pirates 4D movie where we were spritzed on a few times. It was good fun.

But I don't know how people lived in Texas before they invented air conditioning. At one point in the Shamu Arena they turned on some big fountains in the tank and it was so nice. They keep the water in that tank at 52 degrees. It created a lovely cool breeze.

Two more days of summer vacation...

Abundance - the prequel

Last summer (last fall? I don't remember exactly) James helped me sort through some stuff in our kitchen cabinets and clear it all out. Then we gathered our opened cans and bags and boxes of various items and we transferred it all into the gallon-size rubbermaid canisters I mentioned a couple of days ago. All the containers have the metal gripper lids that make them air-tight.

This is the result and I have to say it's a much more efficient use of space. In this small space I have the following:

• lentils
• pinto beans
• instant potato flakes
• brown rice
• cornmeal
• white rice
• semi-sweet chocolate chips
• white chocolate chips
• dry milk
• black beans
• egg noodles
• all-purpose flour
• granulated sugar
• brown sugar
• rolled oats
• quick-cooking brown rice
• fruit drink mix
• red winter wheat
• white wheat
• green split peas

That's a lot of food stored on only TWO kitchen shelves! It's all organized in the canisters, and they fit two deep on the shelves. I can see exactly what's there and how much of it I have. I don't have to go on any sort of expedition to the back of the pantry to see if I have chocolate chips and I don't have to buy yet another pound of lentils because the tiny plastic bag they come in is hidden behind a can of soup. Maybe you can imagine what it would look like if all that food was in its original containers stacked neatly, or not, onto two shelves. The best part is that there isn't any more possibility of bags or boxes breaking open spilling food all over my pantry shelves and floor. It's all right there, safe and contained, and out in the open.

I really love this set-up in my kitchen! I did have to clean out this cabinet to accomplish this. I remember that there was all sorts of stuff in there. I don't remember what any of it was and I haven't missed it at all. So if you feel inspired to organize your food storage or to start putting some food aside in case of a rainy day, don't let the lack of cabinet space deter you. Undoubtedly you have a lot of stuff you don't need taking up valuable kitchen real estate.

Abundance II

This is the second step in the Great Food Storage Overhaul. We bought a small cabinet with doors to keep in our kitchen where I'll keep my large containers of things like oil and honey, as well as some 1-gallon Rubbermaid containers where I keep the contents of the #10 cans after they've been opened. I like these containers a lot:

1. They're clear so I can see what's in them,
2. and they're small enough to fit in my new cabinet, which is small enough to fit in my kitchen.

I hope that these two things will help me incorporate our food storage into our daily meals more often.

When I first found out about them I bought some special metal "gripper" lids for the Rubbermaid containers to replace the plastic lids that came with them. The gripper lids make the containers air-tight and will keep out moisture, air (especially oxygen because of the oxygen-absorbing packets that I put inside them) and insects. The combination of the PETE containers with the gripper lids will also keep odors locked inside the container - no more freeze-dried strawberries absorbing the smell of dehydrated onions!

Speaking of insects - bugs are a pain in the neck. I had to throw out a bunch of mylar packets of quick oats this week because I hadn't sealed them properly and they were infested with tiny red bugs. This just about broke my heart. (I'm going back to cans 100%, and I've reserved the portable can sealer for the first week in September so that I can repackage what I've got in mylar pouches into cans.) The rubbermaid canisters with the gripper lids will not only keep bugs out, they will keep any bugs already in the food inside the container so that the infestation will not spread.

I cannot live with infestation!

Abundance

My Little Prince and I tackled the beginning of one of our big summertime projects today. We rescued all of our long-term food storage out of bedroom closets and out from under beds, and gathered it all into one place.

The one place is not perfect; all this food is now in our "guest bedroom". The ideal thing (in my mind, anyway) would be to have a separate room in the house that never was used for anything but food storage. We don't have that luxury in our house - but the spare bedroom is the next best thing.

It's better than it was, though, because now all the boxes and cans are in one place. I can see exactly what we have. I've tried keeping a running inventory but sending a kid running upstairs to get more rice when I'm out of rice in the kitchen doesn't make for convenient inventory control - I never remembered to change the pencilled-in number of cans while I was making dinner. And with everything spread out all over the whole upstairs it was too hard to keep track of. Now I can see at a glance what we have plenty of and what needs to be ordered. For sure it will be much easier this way to make sure that everything is rotated when I bring new stuff in.

My guests will have to sleep with giant #10 cans of rice and beans and oats and dry milk. I can live with that.

The speed of sound

If my neighbors cannot hear their little dog endlessly barking every single night of my life, will they be able to hear its cries as I strangle it to death? Or would a single gunshot be quicker and quieter? Which do you suppose is more gratifying?

These are the questions that I'll ponder tonight as I'm listening to barking and wishing I could go to sleep.

Oh the thinks you can think!

Do you remember that Dr. Seuss book? I don't recall that we had that one in particular when I was a kid but we had lots of others.

Thinks I've had on my mind lately:

• The Glass Castle
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog
• Transcendentalism
• Relief Society
• Visiting Teaching
• New babies
• Scaling everything back
• Expanding my horizons
• Should I became a hermit?
• If powdered milk smells terrible, has it gone bad? Because even if it's still good, it will taste terrible, right?
• Smoking televisions, leaky plumbing and a/c problems
• Am I a fraud?
  

It sounds like a funny story, right? Now to get it into rhyming verse...

tick tick tick

I just hate insomnia. Aside from the fact that it means tired and worn out the next day, I don't feel good while I'm up late.

The middle of the night is depressing. My mind races off in a negative direction and I feel despair, worthless, and hopeless at a time when I should be restful and peaceful. Even if I'm doing something relaxing my head and my heart revolt against me.

The middle of the night is wrong. I don't know why and it shouldn't make a difference but there it is.