October - My favorite month!

In my effort to keep things light I am completely not posting about yet another police impersonator caught locally harassing women or the burglary ring brought down. Going to ignore the shootings and even the big doctor/pharmacy/drug dudes getting brought down for all sorts of crime. Going to pretend for a moment that the multiple undercover units patrolling our area at night are just neighbors. ........ See, it is depressing!

So I am going to talk about October. I love October. Mostly because I love Halloween and am one of those crazy people who decorate inside and out for it. We could go deeper into the beauty of All Hallows but that is part of my Wiccan youth and I am no longer the rebellious type having firmly settled into my Christian upbringing and all. (Though they sure do know their herb lore!) I love the fun of it all. When I was a teen I worked in a haunted mill. I was the casket girl. I would spend time getting my makeup just perfect to match the creepy maniquin in the coffin across the isle and then I would lay there and pop up and scream for each group that entered my room. I loved it. Now I pass that love to my kids. Bug has always loved the creepy and spooky. The kid loves picking something nice for her costume and then creeping it out. She was a corpse bride one year. This year is Zombie Cheerleader!  My Monkey is not sure about the creepy yet but she loves the decorations. She doesn't want to touch the spider but she giggles and calls him her spooky friend. I think we all need to enjoy the fun of it.

What are you/your (grand)kids going to be this year?

New accessories!

We got new accessories for the 10/22's. They are supposed to be an awesome improvement. Hubby likes that they can be cleaned. Will give a review once we use them!

Under attack? Maybe a little but that's okay!

I have realized recently that when I feel upset by things in life my mind instantly goes to the beauty of my marriage. It is as if my coping mechanism when I feel threatened in any way is for my brain to say "Lila yes this person is a total jerk but remember the most important truth in your life. The one person you need to love and accept you unconditionally already does that. Who cares what the jerk thinks." I find that to be pretty amazing. The life that we have is far from what many would define as perfect but for me it is exactly that. We aren't rich, we aren't going to be. (Though I am going to make a best sellers list darn it!) We don't have all the newest or best toys. I don't care. Bash my politics. Bash my religion. Bash even the very concept of faith. Bash my parenting. Bash my looks. Bash away jerks. My husband finds me sexy. My girls are happy, smart, and well rounded. My passion is fed through writing. I am in need of nothing else. I have a strength no one can take from me because I am loved beyond measure.

Do you have something that makes all the crap fade away? What is it?

My greatest wish for all of my blog friends is that they have that one thing. It can be any thing. I am lucky that mine comes in the arms of a good strong man but a mate isn't a requirement. I wish you all joy. So much joy. Passion and health and happiness. So often as we walk this path of preparation and safety through our beautiful weapons we are immersed in sludge and negativity. I am working to make a huge effort to avoid that sludge. It was depressing me. Extended family stress was pulling me down. Jerks were demeaning me. Not going to let it build like it had been. Time to find the good. Find your good and tell me about it!

Nifty app!

So my lovely smart phone ate it. The water bath contributed but it was being finicky anyway. So on to replacing it. Had to download all my apps again. While meandering in app land I discovered the U.S. Survival guide app. Same nifty guide now on my phone. Knots. Poisons. First Aid. Soooo cool.

So if you are a geek like me what apps do you adore? Find any that help in your survival prep/ gun love?

2.5 years! Cool.

We suck at actually keeping up on big deal blogging anniversaries. It is a flaw. We are all pretty busy and honestly lucky to remember what day it is let alone our own names half the time. So I got a hankering to look and see when the first post was on the blog and it was by Maggy on 3/24/09. Pretty nifty. We are now 2.5 years old. That is like a teenager in blog years I think! Even though Mags is super hard to get on a computer these days I know I speak for her and Gracie when I say thank you to all who read us and to those who have read us for a long while!! We totally adore the support!! Now if I could get past my funk and think again I would have some decent posts to do!

I have the blah's......

Yup. That's me. I think in my effort to absorb all this prepping and gunning and getting to it blogging I overwhelmed myself. I left for 2 days and came back to over 200 posts in my feed. This overwhelms me. This is normal when I am offline. i follow to many people I think. Of course only a few are bloggers I love to read, other's are bloggers who have interesting stuff sometimes but other times it is not for me. or they aren't really friendly. Or they are just info sharing and not actually interacting with anyone. Ugggg...... So if you wonder where my comments have gone it is because I have a huge stack to read so I post comments on the posts I really enjoy. I am reading all of my faves! You guys all rock. I just am feeling off. sick and little energy. Sorry! 

Shooting fun!

This has been a great weekend with my love home from work. Soon that will be a rare thing as once his machine is in the ground it requires 24/7 babysitting and that usually means 7 days a week for him. We took advantage! Saturday was spent in blessed relaxation with a dash of Bass Pro tossed in. I have a love/hate relationship with that store. I love all the things I find but I hate the dent in the wallet. Bought a ton of skeet so the boys could play.

Then today we got up early and went out to shoot again. The friend who joined us last time had made a couple purchases of his own and brought his wife along this time. She is a fibromite so it was nice to discuss shooting with someone who gets our specific drawbacks even though they are just now building their own collection. J.W. brought out one of our other rifles. I had never shot the .17. For some reason I had assumed it was like hubby's bad boy in the kick range and have just stayed away from it. Yeah I know I should know better after reading and stuff but hey, I am still a relative newbie. So i shot that today. Love the lack of kick. The rhythm of it was beautiful. The FMS difficulty was that I could not hold it up, shoot, chamber a new round, and shoot again. In a way it made my accuracy more surprising because I would have to lower my barrel, chamber, then raise again to shoot or my muscles threatened to give.  Left me with shoulders burning tonight but it was a lot of fun.

Nephew once again proved why I think he has major skills. Boys were shooting skeet. He had his 10/22 up and was just looking through the scope next to them. Both missed one of the skeet and with that rifle he shot the skeet out of the air. To prove it wasn't a fluke we had him lower and raise and shoot on the pull. Darn kid did it again. He has some skills.

So the day was good. I shot my rifle and the 9mm and got to play with the .17. Had the husband shoulder the shotgun so I could feel how it did with the short barrel on it. Still youch. Otherwise a very positive and fun day!! We needed it! There is some sick building in the house. 3 kids so far. I already have the aches so i know I am up next. Means I have a few miserable days ahead. I really need to find a good rheumatologist and stop putting it off. I need to get ahead of this fun that is my life. I keep saying I have accepted my new normal but just by not figuring out treatment beyond my meds shows I am not fully owning this and doing all I can to relieve the gunk. Uggg....... Fun stuff. Happy Sunday y'all.

Document Organization.

As I embark on this quest one thing I have realized is important is better organization. While I know basically where all the important documents are, (a box in my closet) they are in no way organized and can take forever to find the exact document I needed. So to fix that I bought large plastic totes that are created for file storage and handle both legal and letter sized files. I got 2 so I can have one for each sized file type and the hanging files as well as folders for each. I finally went through my office are and cleaned out the clutter. It was horrible. I bought 3 little space savers to separate bills, things to be shredded and things to be filed. This will help with my organization there. Tonight I plan to pull out my box and start to file things away the right way. Will make so many things easier. Honestly SHTF can be so many different situations and knowing where your birth certificate is or the mortgage documents and insurance papers can be needed quickly. I really recommend everyone grab this nasty bull by the horns!

Where's the gun? Let's use a screwdriver!

Uggg. The running theme seems to be young in all my posts huh? Early 20's this time.

Authorities identify woman, 22, who was stabbed to death

A 22-year-old woman stabbed to death last week in the northeast valley was identified Wednesday as Brittney Nicole Junsay.
The Las Vegas resident died from multiple stab wounds to her chest, the coroner's office said.
Las Vegas police arrested Elizabeth Denise Crocketts, 21, in connection with Junsay's death. Crocketts stabbed Junsay on Friday with a screwdriver during a fight in the 5000 block of Nellis Oasis Lane, near Nellis Boulevard and Gowan Road, police said.
Crocketts was being held without bail at the Clark County jail. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 12.

The first commenter must be one of us. 

Desert flash floods.

Not much is going on with me right now. Editing, reading, taking care of my family. The usual. We are in monsoon conditions and were finally able to let the teens see why the drainage tunnels are so dangerous even though it is so dry. This pic is of a road not even 100 yards from the house. The rain had only been falling for about 20 minutes when I took this picture. I had ventured out to get Miss. Bug to school. I know the road and the depth and have a heavy 4x4 and crossed it but found immense traffic getting to the school and decided to keep her home. I saw a small mustang decide to skip the intersection pictured and go to turn around only to be hit broadside with another wave and be pushed into the rushing water. Driving in conditions like these require a knowledge of your road, a slow and steady hand, and a very heavy vehicle. Do not ever even consider crossing a road like this if you are not sure of the depth. It does not take a lot of force to lift a smaller car and float it off despite what you might think. In a SHTF situation you need to make sure the route of escape you have chosen is one you can traverse in any condition. Know the road. Drive the route even if it is out of the way so you are not forced to attack a road like this with no knowledge of it. It can and will save your life and your belongings.

9/11- My memories.

As I sit here on the tenth anniversary I am struck by the changes in our country. Some were positive, some not so much. The younger generations learned real fear that day. We learned that no matter how great we thought our country was we could still be brought low on our own soil. We learned that the big scary terrorist was real and angling for us and our loved ones. We learned that war could be fought in our yards.

We also learned how to band together and fight back. We learned that our strength comes shining through when we put the politics aside and rely on one another. We proved to the world that we can band together in the sight of catastrophe and help each other.

Some of the repercussions have been the memory of those strengths. Those deaths taught us to fight back, fight hard, and win. They taught us courage and to never give up, they taught us passion for our country. The other side of the coin has been this giving up of freedoms though in the pursuit of safety. That part has crippled us I think and it breaks my heart. I think it is a part of what the terrorists wanted. A divided superpower is no longer a super power. In our efforts to find a way to protect ourselves we created more and more laws to regulate every detail of travel and of safety to the point where we fight over it. We look for things that could be unsafe and sign away rights in the hopes we will become more safe. That breaks my heart. Yes we need to be vigilant. We need to fight back. We need to stay strong. Giving up our freedoms does not accomplish that.

The morning of 9/11 I was very pregnant with Bug. I was very sick my entire pregnancy and we were living with my husband's older sister and her family. I had slept late due to being so sick and when I got up it was to find the tv turned on to the attack. The first plane had hit and it was still just a plane crash. Even then I was scared. My uncle was a pilot for United and often flew into New York and I was so scared for him. Then the second plane hit and we realized there was no way it could be a simple plane crash. I was glued to the screen the whole day and was so glad when I got word that my uncle was on a different route that day. I will never forget the worry and the fear and the sadness. Even now remembering makes me hurt. I ache for the families. I hurt for those who responded with selfless devotion and were repaid by loosing their health and even their own lives. That day needs to always stand as a reminder that we are not perfect, we are not immune, we are not the vaulted nation. We are at risk and every day we spend fighting and divided is a day that the enemy wins.

Communicating after EMP.

So I am editing my second completed book. I am over 20k words in and well on track to finish on time as planned. I have a new thread to add in after my first read through that will help push my word count over the 70k mark like I want. I am very pleased with that.

On to my other creation. North has helped me get my basic Apocalypse event figured out. My series is going to take place about 25 years after the event I think. So civilization is trying to rebuild but it isn't great. The event is man-made and natural. Basically a large scale EMP prevents the world from stopping an asteroid. The event also has the effect of boosting the paranormal/magic on the planet. I am kind of combining multiple genres here, hehehe. Soooooo anyway here is where I need thinking. The event destroys all things electrical and the asteroid hits in the pacific taking out a large chunk of the west coast. We are now 25 years later. Obviously things are rebuilding but when you wipe technology out pretty much back to the stone age and take a giant chunk of population with it building back is slow as molasses. So I am having my main character be a cop. Federal though I am not sure yet how that will look. I am thinking the entire continent may become one country.  Obviously basic power was the priority so cell communication is still going to be down. I want communication ideas. Maybe not a way to go nation wide though, more of a relay type system. Not sure really. My girl is going to need to be able to get info from all over but not very easily. Travel is also going to be slower than normal. Which is part of why her job is going to suck.

So ideas? Thoughts?

We aren't alone!

Over the recent long weekend my handsome other half had a birthday and his older sister and her husband came to visit and play for the weekend. Brother-in-law J brought up the topic of TEOTWAWKI and preparations. I think he was a bit surprised to learn exactly how much we are trying to do and how much we continue to do. He also would like to join in those efforts. So our group has risen and I think their focus will be on food preps while we continue with the gun and ammo side for the moment though I am going to be broadening that. I am making lists of a lot of things as well as going to really look into areas of retreat and possibly grabbing that land we want. I think now more than ever expanding this to the rest of the siblings will be wise. The other sisters all will have need and can contribute to things so i think I am going to really formulate a plan here in the next bit to present to them as we are supposed to be together in October. Adding to the capable men is a good thing I think.

Books on my shelf?

The book theme is all over today. Brigid, Murphy's Law, and North have all done it! I decided to follow suit. I kind of have to being the book girl. Granted my collection is not as wide ranging or as vast as some listed. I am a fiction junkie. I am also 29 and prone to moving regularly so I have to purge books a bit regularly. It makes me sad. At our last move i cried over the boxes of books I donated. *sniff sniff* I digress, my current collection has a lot of Louis L'amour. Husband is a fan but I sneak them when he isn't looking. I also love Clive Cussler and Dan Brown. The Adventure type action books. Faye and Jonathan Kellerman are great. I love paranormals so I have Laurell K Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong to name a few. Romance is also a love of course so Nora Roberts, Johanna Lindsey, Stephanie Laurens, Catherine Coulter both romance and FBI, Julie Garwood. I have a ton of favorite writers and know I am missing a bunch of them but honestly I have so many I am just listing what pops into my head. When we moved in here I had 12 boxes full. Hubby actually drove my books down himself rather than have the movers take them simply because of the weight. I have added quite a bit since then though now I have my Nook Color ereader and I try to put books on it rather than buying the bound versions in an effort to save space, hehehe. Poor husband wants to throttle me. My book cases are stacked to the gills 3 rows deep and up. Makes for heavy book cases! ;)

I am looking to now expand my collection into books we will need in a SHTF scenario. Medical info, food, living off grid, guns, things like that. If you guys know of good refrence books that I should have in a hardcopy form for a TEOTWAWKI life I would be very appreciative!

Where's the gun? Ehhh a knife will do!

Seriously I get this junk too often and all locally. It is depressing. This one is especially upsetting because the victim was a young teen, a child really, still in the first blush of her life. There is outrage here thank goodness. I just wish other people were as tired of this violence as I am.

Suspect in Custody in Teen's Murder

A 19-year-old man is behind bars and facing charges of murder and sexual assault in the death of 15-year-old Alyssa Otremba.The missing teen's burned body was discovered over the weekend in a desert area near her home in northwest Las Vegas.
Metro police say Javier Righetti was arrested less than a mile from where Otremba's body was found Saturday near U.S. Route 95 at Oso Blanca Road and Grand Teton Drive.
Police believe the murder was random. They say Otremba's body showed signs of blunt force trauma and multiple stab wounds. Otremba was reported missing Friday night after sending her mother a text message saying her cell phone was dying and she was walking home. The girl never returned.
Righetti is set for a court hearing Wednesday on charges including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and robbery.

I am glad that the area is pissed about this one. They should be. I like the comment on the story and would like to know the answer as well. So sick of all the crap here. I look forward to moving on.

Texas Fires

I spent a lot of my growing years in Texas. Summers and holidays were spent with my grandparents on their  large spread outside of Bastrop. Right now the area is burning. So far it seems the family and other people I love have been lucky. Fire has come close and is licking at the boot heels but hasn't burned anything of ours yet but some reports say that half of Bastrop is gone and that it is going to get worse before it gets better. With Katia steaming up the gulf winds could pick up and the largest fire is at 0%  containment. So please everyone pray. Pray for those hundreds of families who have lost their homes, pray for those evacuated, pray for those at risk, and I selfishly ask for an extra little prayer for my family. While my grandparents are no longer alive to see a city they loved and raised their sons in burn we do still have family there and they are at risk and need that love.

Thanks guys!

A labor day of no labor at all!

We got up this morning before the sun to avoid the heat. The guys had loaded up the toys yesterday so it was just about getting everyone dressed and out. A co-worker of my hubby was going to join us with his little boy and it was going to be the first time the young one had shot so we kept it to the small toys. .22 rifle and pistol, my 9mm for me, and then because both boys needed to play with their new toys we had the shotguns and the Circuit Judge. The easily put a few hundred rounds out each and loved it. The new little shooter absorbed the rules well and proved to be a natural shot. His aim was crazy accurate. Then we went to trying the new shotgun on some skeet. You guys were very right. That thing kicked my trash. I am going to go old style and learn to shoot from the hip with it until we can get me one more taylored to my needs. Youch. Even the boys had marks on their shoulders. Of course they loved it. Hehehe. Men. The Circuit Judge is interesting. Nicer to shoot for me than a normal revolver. Crazy accurate. Brother in law put a scope on it but I am a lefty so it was a titch awkward so I used the regular sight. Blew apart a water bottle and had very little kick. I actually enjoyed it.

I realized I needed more range time with my 9mm. I would scare off an attacker and wound them sure but my accuracy is not great. Honestly a huge part of that is my eyesight. I can't see very well with the astigmatism. I really need to get this fixed soon.

Overall it was a fabulous day of shooting. I needed it. The dance in the rain and the glorious nap after were ice cream on the cake!! ( Yes I mean ice cream not icing, hehehe)

Where's the gun?- Let's try a vase instead!

Oh this lovely area of the world. I can almost keep up with Weerd and I am sticking to local area stuff. Yuck!!

Police: Woman bludgeoned friend with vase, cut her throat

Disturbing details are surfacing in a woman's alleged rampage that ended with another woman dead in a bathtub.

Police say 23-year-old Stephanie Kirby broke into an apartment and attacked the victim while she was sleeping.
It happened at the Canyon Point Apartments on Harmon near Boulder Highway. Kirby reportedly called police on Thursday morning, admitting she had done something wrong.
Documents say Kirby confessed to bludgeoning her once friend with a vase. She then allegedly ordered her to get in the tub where she cut the victim's throat.

Kirby denied having the intent to kill.
Police say Kirby stabbed her victim a number of times with a kitchen knife. She allegedly admitted to discarding the knife, the vase and bloody clothes in a dumpster near where the murder happened.
Kirby is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center on a charge with murder with a deadly weapon and a probation violation. She's due in court on Tuesday.
The Clark County Coroner's Office said Friday that Tiffany Batteate's cause of death was multiple blunt and sharp force injuries to her head and neck. Batteate was 24-years-old.

 

 

Lovely!! So basically chick claims she meant no harm but just happened to stumble into the vase to smack her victim after breaking in, then kills her by cutting her throat and stabbing her! Lovely. Won't count because she forgot her gun though right?

Mind numbing fear and the blessings that come with it.

Lately a few of our fellow bloggers and real life friends have been having health fun. Health issues are never fun or easy. Some talk about it and some don't. Both ways are fine. Watching people i care about struggle has brought up some memories and so I thought to share some feelings as a show of support and a reminder than even when it feels overwhelming you are never alone in your fear.

When we first moved here my amazing guy decided it was time to push me to really figure out my health. I was tired all the time, bruises took days or even weeks to heal, I looked just plain sickly sometimes even though my weight stayed the same and higher than I would like even though I ate little. Nevada is a specialist state. The rate of lawsuits here are so high that your primary doc handles little stuff and passes you on for big stuff so she sent me to a hematologist. He discovered something odd. While my white blood cells are in the normal to sometimes low count range the percentage of them that are lymphocyte cells are very elevated. He tested again and again and always got the same results. Elevated lymphocytes. Well this can be a fluke or it can be a big deal. Two big deal options were cancer. One would kill me very fast and one may never kill me at all. So while we waited for some very extensive testing results and time between tests to check for accuracy I felt like my life was in this horrible holding pattern. 6 weeks of wondering about my life, my future, my children and their future. I have never been so freaking scared. I rarely slept. Every bruise was a new reason to worry. Every time I had a migraine I was terrified. I researched until I was blue in the face.

Then the results came back. Not cancer but no clue why you have the abnormality. My bruising was chalked up to being so fair. So it was on to more tests, this time to the endocrinologist. I was tested for everything he could think of. More waiting and worrying. Luckily most of his tests wouldn't result in a fatal diagnosis.

Once again I was healthy. I was the healthiest sick person they had ever seen. Sure my blood had weird oddities but nothing that pointed to a specific diagnosis. Then came the rheumatologist. The guy was a complete jerk but was sure it was FMS. And so I had an answer.

Of course sometimes answers don't feel like comfort. The answers can be scary and life altering. They can feel like an awful weight pressing down on our world and forever changing things. I tend to be grateful for answers even when they suck because I would rather know what battle to wage than stand on that bleak precipice and hope I jump the right direction to flee the demons chasing me. It truly is in how you look at it.

So if you are facing challenges please remember that you are not alone, you are loved, and the worst result you can ever get is "Inconclusive". Test on. Push on, fight on. Get your answers and know that whatever the outcome you won't face it alone.

Trash pickers.

This morning due to a lovely batch of events I was out with Bug and Monkey long before Bug needed to be to school. We had some time to kill before I needed to drop Bug off so I bought us all a Mickey D's Sausage Biscuit and a milk and went in search of a park to hide at. While I know our major streets and they run in a basic grid some smaller ones are pretty convoluted. I like to just explore these sometimes. Brother-in-law is looking to buy a house around this park I had in mind so I thought to check things out and follow the twisty way to the park. On my adventure I saw a truck in front of me just loaded down with metal. Twisted heaps of it. To my total amazement the truck stopped at a house with a pile of trash not in a can and two Hispanic men jumped out and began to dig through. They then crossed the street to a similar pile, pulled apart a dresser for the metal tracks and tossed them into their pile. Wow.

The pile was huge. So it made me think. In all the time it took to steal all that metal (Yes it was trash but they didn't exactly ask the owners if they could scatter their garbage to pick through it.) they could have looked for honest work. Even if just going door to door asking to wash windows or clean lawns. Something. Ugggg.......