Unique use for the box truck

Do you remember the 26-foot box truck we bought to help us move?

In mid-July, we sent the box truck away with some friends. It needed some repairs, and the husband (a brilliant mechanic) is just the guy to do it. He had some delays before he could get started on it, but no one is in a rush and the truck is in good hands.

Which is why we howled with laughter when we got an email from these friends yesterday. It seems their daughter was turning 16, and the family decided on a socially distanced outdoor movie party ... using the side of the box truck as a movie screen!

What a perfect venue!

Those "squirrel" moments

Don is notoriously absent-minded. He's been that way as long as I've known him. Throughout our married life, his most frequent question is "Where's my...?" and on a good day I can supply the answer.

Today he came into the house and started rummaging in a particular basket for some thin drill bits he needed. "I know it's in here," he muttered. "Aha! Success!" He held up a small plastic bag.

He went on to explain, "I can never find this particular-size drill bit when I need it, so a few months ago I bought about a zillion of them and kept them in this bag in this basket. This is one of the few things I know exactly where it is, so DON'T MOVE IT."

I promised.

"I've also figured out why I'm absent-minded," he added. "It's because I always have 'squirrel' moments."

He's referring to the dog character from the movie "Up" in which the talking dog is distracted by the sight of a squirrel and will interrupt whatever he's saying to focus on the rodent, as in this film clip:



"What I'll do," Don explained, "is go into the shop, find my bag of drill bits, but before I can put one to use, I spot something shiny like a piece of metal and think to myself, 'If I just bend that metal in a certain way, I can make a small nuclear reactor.'"

So, eager to test his theory, he puts the bag of spare drill bits aside on a random spot of shelf and focuses on the shiny piece of metal. Then he gets to work using the drill bit, and the bag of spare bits remains on the random spot of shelf. Two weeks later when he needs the drill bit again, he can't find either the one he used or his bag of spares.

So there you go. It's not "senior moments" since he's done this long before we were married; it's just a "squirrel" moment.

At least, that's his story and he's sticking to it.

Friday roundup

I honestly meant to put this post up yesterday (Friday) but it turned into a surprisingly busy day, so sorry about that.

Friday Roundups (regardless of what day they're posted) are so we can all check in on what steps we've taken, big or small, to inch us incrementally toward greater preparedness. Since it's winter and outdoor work is limited, our Friday Roundups have been pretty pathetic lately, but here goes:

• We had our regular Friday neighborhood potluck (it was our turn to host). It was full house this time -- five families, 14 people total -- and we had a lovely visit. I know I've said it again and again, but I can't help it: we are blessed with wonderful neighbors. These weekly potlucks we've had for the past eight years are a cement that has bound us together in ways that are hard to describe.

Some people in our group are experiencing serious health issues, so as spring unfolds we'll be pulling together and pitching in on chores and tasks that need doing while they recuperate. It's what neighbors do. It's the third leg of preparedness -- community.

• Another of these neighbors experienced a first: making elderberry jelly. She has an elderberry bush in her yard and had frozen much of the fruit, so this week she decided to try her hand, for the first time, at making jelly. It worked and she was thrilled. Food preservation -- a good thing to know!

• This same neighbor and I signed up to attend a gardening seminar in March. Among the classes offered are pruning and permaculture. I don't know much about either subject, so it will help to increase our knowledge.

• I learned a tasty new way to cook legumes (specifically lentils). Since legumes are one of the best prepper foods available (cheap, nutritious, versatile), having attractive ways to prepare them is important.

• I took Lydia to the vet. She's coming up on eight years old, and suddenly started limping and lifting her left front paw. Turned out to be arthritis, so she's on some temporary anti-inflammatories, as well as more permanent glucosamine/chondroitin. If her antics and energy levels are anything to go by, she's feeling like a puppy again. The vet confirmed she's in excellent health.

• I made curtains to cover the clutter in the pantry, which is right off the living room. (Don't worry, Don intends to install barnwood trim to hide the curtain rod.)

I absolutely love how these curtains look. I keep stopping to admire them. As the artist William Morris once observed, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." These curtains fulfill both those requirements.

• Along the lines of figuring out what's "useful," I'm continuing the slow but steady purge of unneeded things in the house. I am floored by the amount of paperwork we had cluttering up corners and shelves. I emptied four file cabinet drawers...

...which allowed me to take all our remaining tax paperwork we must retain...

...and fit it neatly into the file drawers. Whoo-hoo, no more big honkin' banker's boxes taking up closet space!

• I also emptied TEN binders of paperwork (old articles, writings, clippings, seminars, workshops, etc.), some of which were 20 years old. Why on earth was I holding on to this stuff?

I kept a couple of the empty binders and donated the rest to a thrift store.

• I also took a trip down memory lane and purged our extensive collection of children's books.

Now before my kids see this post and FREAK OUT, rest assured I kept all our beloved childhood classics. We have a rich treasure-trove of excellent children's books, and I have no intention of discarding them.

What I got rid of were books they never had much interest in, or duplicates, or are so commonly available that holding onto copies was pointless (don't worry, I kept every Dr. Seuss book). You know how much all the discarded books weighed? Sixty pounds.

• I also took a good hard look at our collection of DVDs.

I withdrew the movies I thought no one was interested in. Then I had both Don and Younger Daughter hold back ones they wanted to keep.

In the end I got rid of 75 DVDs. SEVENTY-FIVE. How on earth did we accumulate 75 superfluous DVDs? The answer: thrift stores. Friends. Freebies. We kept the movies we thoroughly enjoy watching over and over (ahem: Jane Austen) and donated the rest.

• Don also took a dump run. We have no garbage service around here, and during the icy weather we couldn't take the farm truck on the road (too dangerous). Now the accumulated garbage is gone, leaving a feeling of "Aaaahhh."

So that's been our roundup over the last two weeks. What has everyone else done, big or small, to increase self-sufficiency?

Dysfunctional Hollywood

One of the trends we've noticed in movies over the last few years is to make every family dysfunctional. I think the logic is that movies are supposed to reflect "reality" (which, sadly, they might), and since apparently no one in Hollywood believes there are any happy, stable families left in existence, they film what they (think they) know. The trend is so strong that nowadays it's impossible for Hollywood to depict a "traditional" family in a positive light. If a nuclear family is actually (gasp) intact, then it means everyone is full of angst, anger, addictions, affairs, or other vices.

I remember finding a movie remake of the 1960s television series Lost in Space. The Robinsons in the original Lost in Space, if you recall, were a close and loving family who had all sorts of campy adventures; but no one doubted the strength of their family ties.

However in the movie remake, everyone hated each other. The family unit, naturally, had to be dysfunctional. Sheesh, folks, would you really send a family into space when they were already at each others' throats? Does that sound like a recipe for success in interstellar exploration?

So anyway, this evening Don was looking through some listings of movie releases when he came across a movie blurb so extraordinary that he read it out loud:

Desperate to get out from under her overprotective mother, a home-schooled teen runs off to live with her dad, and forms a bond with his much-younger boyfriend.

Whaaaa...???

The movie, entitled Sassy Pants, was released last year.

To conceive of such a stoopid plot, it's as if, literally, Hollywood simply cannot fathom a family that actually gets along. Everyone has to be dysfunctional. On the IMDB page, someone left a note: Worst mother since Mommy Dearest. Then of course she's representative of ALL homeschooling moms, right?

"Who thinks of these plots?" I groused.

"Hollywood," replied Don. "They probably said to themselves, 'Let's make a movie that reflects our viewpoint on something we know nothing about. Since no one could possibly like being homeschooled, and people probably just homeschool to hide the bruises anyway, let's have a plot with a dysfunctional family and give it a modern twist.'"

I guess this is how Hollywood defines normal.

We don't watch a lot of movies in our family, and if this is the drivel coming out of Tinseltown, I guess we're not missing much. Anyway, I can assure you we will never ever see this film.

Personally I don't think it's homeschooling families that are dysfunctional. It's Hollywood.