Making a list and checking it twice!

Okay. My guy is a hard worker. When we are in prep he works 50 a week. When he is tunneling he can work a whole lot more. We have had years where he was lucky to have 10 days total off the entire year. As this job is behind I imagine that will be the case here soon. So unless he is in a frame of mind where he isn't recovering from the work I leave him be on discussing bigger things. This past weekend he was cleaning. He does that when I have been especially sick. This included reorganizing his side of our bedroom. (I swear aliens move in, I stay far far away.) He also repacked his gobag. This gave me the perfect opening to say that I would like to add bags for all of us, discuss a family meeting place out of the city, and I think a get home bag for him is in order. Once again I was surprised to learn he had pretty much everything in his truck to get home except a decent gun and the reason for that is his project is such as it is that weapons are prohibited and vehicles are searched. Other items are prohibited as well. I didn't know that. You learn every day right. So we are planning out our bags. Woohoo.

I have also come to a bit of a realization. Yes I am slow on some of these at times. My FMS has me on 2 meds currently. Part of the problem for most with FMS is sleep. We don't. If we do we don't do it deeply enough to get that good healing sleep. I went to the doctor to discuss my recent after camping flare and my sleep. My usual plan had been Tylenol PM several nights a week. Can't be healthy. I wanted to see what I could do to improve my sleep medicinally that wouldn't completely knock me out. I need to be able to get up because Monkey still wakes sometimes. She had no idea. So I had Hubby pick up a "natural" sleep pill. It is a blend of herbs and such that are all supposed to help induce sleep. They do nothing for me so far. But it did get me thinking. I need to keep this search up. When SHTF I need ways to help with my sleep and my pain without meds. Gracie actually uses an oil and thinks it might help me. That would be something to look into using and making myself. I would also like to know how to help my husband with his pain. I have a pretty good herbal medicine book but I think I need a couple more. Some specific to pain and FMS, a book on making my own oils, a book with pictures to help with identification of herbs.

I have also decided that since I can't realistically stockpile food here as this is a horrid location if SHTF I want to look into seed storage. Now that the boys have told me a where I can plan to that and store things I know we can grow there. Also considering looking at an acre in that area. Just a small plot for simple storage purposes maybe. Prices are very low right now so it might be something to think about.


What have you found necessary in a gobag with children? Planning for Hubby and I is one thing and there are obvious needs for the girls that we would carry but what special needs might they have? I welcome your thoughts!

Ryan makes a good point....

So if you do not know us well yet we have a companion blog written by men. Blech Cooties....Ah....... Okay not really.

Total Survivalist Libertarian Rant Fest! TSLRF for short. Ryan is their main writer but like us there are 3 over there. Anywhoodle Ryan recently made a post about being in a situation when your home/retreat is for some reason out of play. We have all heard of the famous Bug Out Bag and Go Bag. Another Blogger I thoroughly enjoy over at Straight forward In A Crooked World detailed the differences here and here. Very fine reading for those who are curious.

So to Ryan's post and the idea of the cache. I honestly hadn't given it a lot of thought. I have been stewing on my Run Box. A Lila version of things. A easy to carry tote with all of our important files as well as a few boxes of ammo for the weapons we carry, first aid, and emergency money and the like. I do like the idea of a cache though. We are lucky enough that this job puts us close enough to make a dash to family who is rural enough to be away from harm in a bad scenarion but close enough to be feesable. A cache of important things with them like a copy of the Lila Run Box might just be a good thing. The way things are looking who knows how soon we might need it. Scary to think about but absolutely on my mind these days.

Petroglyph Exploration followed by live fire!

This morning we went on another wonderful family desert adventure. These have become common place and serve a couple purposes. In a SHTF scenario when you live like we do in a suburban area outside a pretty major U.S. city it is always very very important to explore the rural areas surrounding you. You need to know the best places to go if you need a short term place to ride out a storm (literal or figurative). It is also just plain fun. We love finding little explored areas and since this is the desert the amount of BLM land and other public land between populated areas is plentiful. We have gotten into metal detecting which adds to the awesome.

Back to today, lol. Today we took a new road (for us anyway) my BIL had discovered last week that he wanted to show to us. After some bumps and turns through the fairly level desert you hit an area of foot hill type hills and rocky outcroppings. Then you see a very rough pull out area and an interesting park visitor type fence. We got out here and walked around where we got to see some pretty beautiful rock formations and some gorgeous petroglyphs high on the cliffs. Who knows how the Indians who drew then got some of them up there but they were beyond beautiful. Of course us women folk took pictures like crazy! The trees were plentiful enough that I am also willing to be their is a spring of some sort fairly close and think the area needs more searching. If that is the case and it is still a live spring even if it is small it is a place to remember if short term running is needed. Our long term plan requires somewhere farther north with more hunting but in a pinch and to get us through something fairly short a nearby well covered, easily defensible, springed camp would be a good thing to have.

After our exploration and my husbands rather cute mad climb up a cliff after a very large lizard for our girls to see (He chased him into a hole and was only able to retrieve a tail, lol. Our girls have a lizard obsession.) we went back the way we came until we found a side road and could get adequately off the traveled path to pull out the weapons. We kept is small today as we needed to be back in town for other obligations and had in town plans for the evening. My guy had to let his visiting big sister shoot his special toy. He loves his .308 almost as much as he loves me, lol. BIL had a .22 rifle for the older female children. We also broke out the Karr .40 and my sweet SIL had the unfortunate luck to be slide-bitten. Youch. I took the time to put about 40 rounds through my 9mm. I think the empty Gatorade bottle trying to rob me was very unhappily stopped and dead. I need to keep up with practice but I think I did okay.

All in all a good morning. More exploration aka SHTF planning and some live fire practice to boot. This girl is a happy girl!!