Something Must Be Done

My alarm went off this morning and it happened to start BLARING Marketplace at me. I love this segment. I like Marketplace Money so much that I subscribe to their podcast. The morning Marketplace report is almost as important as the weather....and this morning, much like when I hear the weather for the month of February, what I heard made me want to crawl under the covers and not come out until Jan 21st.

Yes. I know that Jan 21st will not be a magic bullet. But it is - as the bumper stickers say - the end of an error.

What did I hear this morning? Job losses everywhere. Interest Rate Pressures. Asian markets down. All of the Stock Markets down. Death. Destruction. Abject poverty. Coupled with the rest of the Doom Harbingers out there....under my covers was looking pretty good to me.

But get up I did and went through the day thinking that Something Must Be Done. In our life. Our every day life. To prepare. Just in case. Because I have a job that is one of the first places people stop spending money when they tighten their budget. Seriously. Behold:

"I hate our couch."
"Yes, but I like the roof over our heads."
"Interior Designer: you're FIRED!"

The End. Luckily, and counter-intuitively, Steve's job will probably not go as quickly as mine. And given that he's a boy scout it might not go at all. But I want to be prepared.

Also there's this: Squirrels don't have a lot of nuts because they make a lot of nuts. They have a lot of nuts because they SAVE a lot of nuts.

So. Step one. Get control over our grocery situation. This translates to being a bitch about eating what's in our house. So I googled Meal Planning Templates and after a lot of really boring I-Could-Have-Done-That-Myself...I found this. It's straightforward but darling. It won't skeeve me out by being ugly and hanging on my fridge. It will help organize the food.

Issue: We buy a lot of our produce (exception: lettuce. It doesn't grow in Texas. I might start substituting with other native leafy greens...if there are any. Or perhaps cut it out altogether....) from the local stands at the farmer's market. It's not totally a 100-mile-diet but it's pretty darned close and I refuse to give up beer/wine/chocolate. But it also means that we're at the whim of the seasons and the productive crops. So I can't really plan until after we've gone there.

So my meal planning is always a bit backwards: we buy and THEN plan. Right now it's working...or would be if I remembered to actually plan. Hopefully cute planner will help with that.

So that's step one. I haven't figured out the other steps, yet. But I bet they'll be less fun (because I love food) and not nearly so cute to plan.