Whatcha doing?

I have yo-yoed between crazy nesting type of stuff to indifferent this past week. I blame it on the swine flu. Since our youngest son has type 1 diabetes we take all flu illnesses seriously. As anyone with a chronic condition should. I took inventory of our medicine cabinet and re-stocked it. I have gone between cleaning like a mad woman to doing nothing. It is maddening I tell you.

Our house has a huge pantry. Since we live in the middle of nowhere it comes in handy to be able to go out of town and shop at one of those warehouse type places and buy large quantities of necessities. If I see a great deal on one of our food staples at the grocery store I can stock up. Until recently that is.

Recently I have been playing the freezer and pantry diving game to save money. The rules are you allow yourself X amount of money to spend that week on groceries and necessities. When the money is gone it is gone and you make do with what you have. I took it one step further and decided it was a good time to take the pantry and freezer down to nothing. I spent the least amount of money I could on groceries while still cooking nutritious and tasty meals. It takes alot of planning and cooking especially from scratch. In my mind, the end results would be worth it, because we would save money and allow us to have a fresher inventory of food in the future.

We did save money and used up the majority of the food. We were getting down to the orphans in the pantry, a can of pumpkin here, a can of beets there. My meal planning was getting to be pretty clever and inventive. In theory I could restock the pantry when we weren't saving up for landscaping or furniture or *gasp* when the economy recovered. Instead my efforts were thwarted by the swine flu. Because we live in California, close to the Mexico border, along with our decision to take precautions I have re-stocked some of the pantry.

Darn swine flu. I hope it fizzles out and we can all stay healthy. Recently I have read the views of some people that by preparing you are panicking or adding to the hysteria. In the past Dh and I laughed at the Y2K situation and were to busy to notice outbreaks in far away lands but we were newlyweds without responsibilities. As time went on we had children and with those amazing creatures comes a sense of vulnerability. Now we notice things, we pray for their health and safety and we take precautions. God Bless.