Ugh.  More sleet and freezing rain early tomorrow morning and then sleet and freezing rain all day tomorrow and then some more Monday morning.  I’m serious…I’d rather have three feet of snow then half an inch of ice.  Snow you can at least shovel.

That last batch of sleet and freezing rain left a ground cover that looked like just a little snow but was as hard as concrete and slippery as all hell.  You just couldn’t walk on it…you got zero traction.  There’s still patches of it out there now as I type this, but the streets and sidewalks had just gotten clear enough that you could move around outside almost like normal.  Now it looks like it’s going to happen all over again. Urgh!  I hate ice!

I spent the day at the grocery store and Costco stocking up on non-perishables, and at Whole Foods for a few things that will last a few weeks: a couple blocks of aged Vermont Cheddar…the jumbo brown free range eggs I like, and some buttermilk and regular milk so I can make some pancakes while I’m stuck inside…some lean ground beef and some deli meats.  Olive Oil for cooking.  Some peanut oil for the deep fryer.  I also restocked on all purpose flour and some other baking stuff.  But it isn’t entirely the pending ice storm that’s driving it.

Every November I buy a lot of bulk items so I won’t have to hassle with the crowds at the supermarkets every time there’s a snow forecast.  I’m not into that survivalist thing, I just hate crowds.  After I buy all that stuff I just feed off it until my stocks are back down to normal levels again in the spring.  But it’s stories like this that have made me consider making that four month supply of food and sundries a permanent feature here at Casa del Garrett.  Obviously I’m down to late February levels here…I normally only plan on having my overstock last through March.

I’m typically very skeptical of all the doomsday scenarios that scream at me from the papers.  But my maternal grandmother used to tell me stories about the great flu epidemic of 1918 (she was a nurse’s aid back then) and maybe that’s why I’m a tad nervous about this one.  During the cold war I always figured those of us who lived near Washington were all toast anyway if the missiles starting flying, and my folks and I never got caught up in that fall out shelter craze.  Nobody I knew bothered with it either.  Now I’m seriously thinking about keeping a four month supply of food here at home all year long.  Welcome to the twenty-first century.  Lets hear it for Spam.