babysteps

Topped off at the cheap station last night. $3.59. Ugh. I saw a t shirt recently that said "I sure could go for a mean tweet and $1.79 gas about now"

Everything I can find on both suggests that they simply go "flat" and less effective from age or exposure to the air. Rubbing alcohol apparently has a tendency to expand but only when heated. How warm is it in your area? Interestingly, the only note on peroxide is that if it doesn't "fizz" at contact with a cut, it's no longer peroxide and is now just water. Now I'm really curious as to what is going on with your bottles!!

Art and craft supplies - not "necessary", but oh so convenient for those of us that still have littles at home! You said these, but it's worth repeating because they're STILL in short supply here: Canning Supplies!! Got Lids? Regular cold/flu meds First Aid supplies Diapers/wipes Lamp oil Disposable plates/cups/silverware I'll keep thinking because I KNOW there are others!

It's over for us, thankfully!! We did have water-bottle ice blocks in the rabbit cages but it just wasn't enough. There wasn't really any opening the house to cool it off, because it never cooled off at night. Our lows for a couple nights in a row were 80ish at 3am. By 8am it was 90 and by 9:30am it was 100*. It was just ugly and I'm so thankful that it's over. And as the heat moves east, keep the folks in Idaho, Montana, N and S Dakota, etc, in your prayers.

Seriously though!! This past weekend was BRUTAL. Those of you that live where it regularly gets over 100*, I don't know how you do it but you have all of my respect and sympathy!! We had highs from 107 (that was the "cool" day) to 119* and lows from 75-85 for several days. (to put that in perspective, our HIGHS are usually 75-85 in June...) Pavement literally buckled, cable car cables melted. The death toll is still being figured but it's pushing 80 last I heard. Just north of us, Salem Or apparently had the highest temperature in the US on Monday at 119. Somewhere in British Columbia Canada logged a high of 121. Our infrastructure out here is not designed for that sort of heat. Most homes out here have neither basements nor a/c. Every store was sold out of ice the first day of the "heat dome" and stayed that way the entire time. Grocery stores were covering their cold foods sections (you know the refrigerated areas that aren't behind doors) with plastic sheeting to try and keep food cold without killing their compressors. We ran our little window a/c nonstop, and our house stayed at a tolerable 80-85. Other than that and the ceiling fans, though, we used as little electricity as possible because everyone was terrified that the power grid would go down. We lost a sheep and all of the rabbits, despite moving them into shade and keeping fresh water in front of them at all times. How do you people who live in the South DO it?? Please pray for rain for the PNW again. I do not want to face another fire season like last year.

Hi Mt Rider 😊 We are doing pretty good these days. Still cleaning up from that ice storm - we lost 27 trees completely and just about all the rest of the oaks, elms, and ash lost their tops at least - but seems like that was the last of the really nasty winter weather for us; I've got peas and lettuce popping in my garden and the fruit trees are starting to bloom. We moved the blueberry patch and the bushes are looking happy in their new location. Hubby prepped a couple rows for new strawberry beds too - those will go in this week. I have a batch of new chicks arriving by mail around the 15th. And two of our cows should be dropping calves the end of this month. It feels like the song from that old movie 7 Brides for 7 Brothers around here- "Spring, Spring, Spring"! Can't believe how much crazy weather is still going on!! Hope everyone is safe and the rest of the year is calm and quiet with no nasty surprises!

Stephanie and family are okay, she checked in on Facebook.

These don't really show the magnitude of the damage, but you get an idea.

Texas is in FAR worse shape than us. The storm itself was bad but we warmed up to our winter normal of 40 degrees within a day or two, so the ice melted quickly and the temps aren't dangerous. We still have about 100,000 without power but no one is in danger of freezing to death like down there with their single digits!! Although to hear people talk on the news... you'd think we all barely survived... lol. This was the worst storm from a power outage standpoint that we've ever had, according to the news. The only real concern I had was my parents. They live with us now, since the Sept fires went through their property, and Dad is on O2. I watched our fuel carefully because Dad's generator HAD to keep going, even if it meant we had to stopp running ours. But we got through it with barely a wrinkle, thankfully!! Thank you for those videos Ambergris - I'll have hubby watch them and see what he thinks. It was just so surreal to have no contact with the outside world for a week! How quickly we have gotten used to our interconnected world!

We had an ice storm here the end of last week. It was a pretty good one, as storms go - at my house we got anywhere from 1-1.5 inches of ice. The tree carnage is impressively awful. We lost probably a dozen or more trees completely in our little 2 acre woods, and hubby estimates close to 90% of our trees lost their tops. Trees and power lines down across roads everywhere. It's a real mess. (As an aside - in the past 6 months in my neck of the woods we've had fires, floods, wind storms, and now an ice storm. There's only one element left and I REALLY don't want earth to join the party!!!) Power went out, which we expected. We're on a well, so that means water too. That's fine, we have back ups and back ups for our back ups. (Thousands of folks are still without power and will be for quite some time, apparently. Mine came back up late last night, so only 5 days for us. We are feeling very blessed this morning! Hot showers for everyone!) Wi-FI was of course also down; again, expected. But then everyone's cell service went down, too. My best guess is the ice took down the repeaters for the cell towers - there are SO MANY power poles down. But that was the one thing I wasn't expecting - every other time we've had a significant power failure, cell service and internet are still accessible. This time, though, you couldn't make calls, couldn't send texts, couldn't connect to the internet, no matter what you did. And it was AMAZING how much harder it made life, not having access to weather reports, or community news, or anything else. We have a NOAA emergency radio, but that doesn't tell me if the gas station in town is out of fuel so I need to go to the next town over, or get me an eta from the power company on when they might get to me, or let me notify my boss that nope, I can't get to work, there are nine trees down between me and town, it's going to take a bit to clear them. I hadn't really thought about having NO cell service. Not being able to make calls, sure - in an emergency when the bandwidth is overloaded, they always tell you to send texts instead, right? But texts wouldn't go through either. We have a landline, but those lines were down too. So what are back up ideas for communication and information? Like I said we do have a NOAA radio. I thought about walkie-talkie types but do they reach far enough to be outside an affected area - storm or other!

So... it doesn't do either one.

Well zowie, we sure got the rain we needed last night. To the point that we were issued flash flood and tornado watches, lol. Those alerts came across our phones yesterday and my 16 year old just laughed. Her comment was that at this point they could announce godzilla or alien invaders and she'd just figure "yep. 2020." For the first time in 2 weeks, the air smells fresh outside. 😊

Happy day! We have been taken OFF the evac alerts completely 😊 No rain yet but lots of damp fog so far. The smoke and fog together makes driving extra fun (yikes) but I'll happily deal with driving by braille if it means we are getting these fires under control. Officially 0% containment still, but they are making progress! My kids still at home are 17, 16, 14, 7 and 1. So two of them can drive and they do have a vehicle to use, and no it's not LOGICAL for me to suddenly panic over leaving them, and yet... that's where I was yesterday. Today is a better day. 😊

Several of the fires *were* caused by arson, but none have been confirmed to be people connected to the protests. We are still at level 1 (be ready) and the fire isn't making much progress our direction. The weather has cooperated a little - it's been cooler and damp yesterday and today. No rain but we'll take what moisture we can get! Our air quality is still ghastly. It's so far off the charts that they don't even know what sort of health effects it will have. Anything over 300 is hazardous and we're clocking numbers over 1000 in some areas. (Not here, although we were up to 979 the other day). It's hard to stay at even a medium-low level of "ready" all the time. I thought I was doing good and then yesterday I just cried like a baby about going to work on Monday. The thought of leaving my babies home alone in a evac zone - even though they're mostly teens, fully capable, and we're only at a level 1 - while hubby and I go off to work just freaked me out completely. And don't get me started on our governor, lol. Let's just say that a lot of people have good reason to be extremely unhappy at her handling of this situation. Beachie Creek fire is closing in on 190,000 acres and has combined with the Lionshead fire which is around 130,000 if i remember right. And they are a mile away from combining with the Riverside fire which is another 150,000. And there are at least 3 other large fires in the state and a couple dozen smaller ones. Rainnnnnnnn!

Yeah. That took place about 15 miles from us, on Monday night when the fire went roaring down the canyon pushed by that windstorm. Their 13 year old son and 73 year old grandmother didn't make it out. They are a well known and loved family in our area. We had searchers everywhere looking for the little boy for two days in the midst of the hot zone. He tried to take shelter in a car.