WF, WHF - Tool Addiction

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Tool addiction. I has it.

Usually it's the husband with the tool addiction. Oh, Chris definitely has an addiction. Garage tools, woodworking tools, diagnostic equipment, musician's tools. If it has a purpose within his hobbies he either has it or wants it. I continually bust his balls about his addiction but in reality I have one of my own.

Don't give me jewelry, or knicknacks, or other pretties. All I ever want is more tools.

Cooking tools, cleaning tools, household tools, garage tools. If it has a motor, a heating element, an LCD, or a specific niche I either want it or have it.

Low Sodium Levels Suck

Sometimes I am a complete and utter idiot.

I was born with natural low sodium levels. It's genetic. My renal-failure on-dialysis brother is, as far as I know, the only kidney patient who has ever been told to eat more salt.

To top that off, I'm on a nearly no processed food diet, since we cook almost everything from scratch. That means I don't get salt the way most Americans do, through excessive salt in food.

I'm also very sensitive to the taste of salt and don't like excessive amounts.

Salt is necessary for hydration, and necessary to keep dehydration at bay. Drinking enough water to keep hydrated is pointless without eating enough salt to keep the water in your cells.

I learned this lesson hard in Phoenix, where merely walking out the door was enough to make me dehydrated. Summer was intolerable, and to this day I'm the only person I know who took runner's salt tablets just to keep hydrated.

Ever try to find salt tablets in a health food or vitamin store? They look at you like you're nuts. Salt is bad for you, didn't you know?

So compared to constant dehydration in the desert the summer here so far has been a breeze.

Until it got up to 80 and severe clear that is, and I forgot that I needed salt with all that water. Water drunkenness is just as bad, if not worse, than dehydration itself. Sure feels worse.

So now I'm making myself some Southern Gatorade (sweetened iced tea with salt added), and I will be drinking at least a gallon a day of it until the temperature dips again.

Mel

Cross-posted to We Few

You Might Be a Survivalist If...

I'm sure y'all have seen the lists:

You might be a survivalist if:

You have a cookbook all about Spam.

You consider your extra large ham radio antenna as “broadband”.

You know how to cook leather.

You’ve ever been on a Soviet “Potential Threat” list.

SWAT has ever asked to borrow a few of your guns.

Your new girlfriend comes over for the first time, and when she walks into the living room, the first thing she sees is your CHL regulation Man sized target with 50 holes in the chest area.

Your dog has more Emergency Rations than 95% of the U.S. population.

You’re the first person at the gun range on Dec 26th to try out your new toys, and the clerk knows you by your first name

The local supermarket manager knows to go ahead and open up the back dock doors when he sees you on a shopping trip.

Your home and property are more secure and better lit than Fort Knox or Area 51.

All the local restaurants know to save you all their 5-gallon buckets on Mondays and Thursdays.

None of your vehicles have electronic ignition or pollution control.

You know the tail numbers of all the helicopters in your area.

The magazines on your coffee table include American Survival Guide, Guns and Ammo, Soldier of Fortune, American Rifleman, Shotgun News and 4 -Wheeler.

You welcome a “mild” El Nino storm because you know its going to fill your cistern.

The power fails in your local movie theater, and you pull your flashlight from your belt and show yourself the way out.

You use your Gerber Tool to cut your steak at a fine dining establishment.

Your knife collection has its own footlocker.

Etc., etc., etc.

We have our own "prepper" moments.

You might be a survivalist if:

* You've discussed how many rain barrels you need and where to build the water tower with your spouse.

* You receive a shipment of sea salt from Amazon, are thrilled to find it comes in a food-grade bucket and make plans to buy more.

* Your UPS guy, FedEx guy, and mail carrier all show up in the same day with various packages of tools and supplies.

Yes, this all happened today, why do you ask...

Cross-posted at We Few

Our Nightly Show

Chris and I have somewhat of a daily ritual.

Coffee first thing in the morning. Work until lunch. Lunch at noon. Work until after the kids eat dinner. Sit down on the couch until its time to make our dinner.

Watch our resident bald eagle fish at dusk.

The "front" of the house is classic log home prow, complete with huge windows for the view. Our living room, kitchen, daylight basement, and loft bedroom all have views of the water.

Every evening, around dusk and without fail, a lone male bald eagle flies over our house, dives into the water, pulls out a fish, and disappears back over the house. It's an awesome sight.

Last night our bald eagle went through his motions, then did it again, and again, and again... a total of four fish made its way... somewhere.

So we looked up the typical breeding times, egg-laying times, egg-hatching times...

We don't just have a male bald eagle. We have a breeding pair, with eaglets. The nest is somewhere in the huge evergreens on the neighbor's property.

There are no pictures because 1. the trees are at least 90 ft tall, 2. it's someone else's property, 3. if the eagles are disturbed they're likely to nest elsewhere, and 4. we don't have a camera lens with quite that amount of zoom.

We're quite content though, with our nightly show.

Cross-posted at We Few

WF, WHF - Adventures in Transplanting

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After 2 1/2 weeks of farmer's markets, I've finally gotten all the seedlings I want for the greenhouse. All started locally, all cheap as hell, all free from sales tax. All easily transplantable when we move, and all more than happy to be in the greenhouse.

The girls and I spent part of this afternoon weeding and planting and we're all excited to see what comes of our plants.

WF, WHF - Notes From the Weekend

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This weekend we also discovered that Tamarack does indeed burn very hot, hot enough to raise the temperature of the house 40 degrees above outside temp without really trying. Oh, and loft master bedrooms are really efficient at trapping that heat, for good or ill.

WF, WHF - The Importance of Good Design

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In the last 6 weeks I've fallen down our stairs twice.

Twice.

Not the outside stairs. Not the stairs to the basement. The loft stairs that lead from the main floor to the master suite.

They're fully enclosed, carpeted, and of spec but of bad design.