MOTIVATED

It's 12:50 a.m. Saturday morning. What am I up to? Well since you ASKED... I'm on Youtube looking up "How to build a Fall Out Shelter?" I am also trying to decide how to PRICE one and WHERE I should put one... I don't think my house would be the greatest place... in case we move... I was thinking in the the PO-DUNK country area where NOONE is likely to trespass on foot and it would be EASY to shoot looters. But it can't be TOO far away because we need to be able to travel to it quickly in case we are in immediate danger AND so we can restock it and rotate the food regularly. IN case you are wondering WHY I'm a paranoid homosapian... the answer is.. I've been a borderline crazy for quite some time in response to the horrid dreams I've had.

When we first got married I dreamed that bombers were dropping explosives, aka BOMBS, over the area where we lived and I would wake up SCANNING my brain for WHAT we should even DO if that were to happen? However I never went so far as to research it... I just told Starling, "I'd like you to build me a bomb shelter for my birthday" over breakfast.

THEN I moved into a mobile home. I had nightmares that Tornados were landing in the middle of the night. I'd wake up in a panic thinking, "We'd just DIE!" And.. again I told Starling of my needs and desires, "Hun... I want you to build me a storm shelter for my birthday."

THEN we moved into our little apartment while we remodeled our house. I dreamt of luters coming and stealing all of our stuff. AND since all of our stuff was chilling in a SHED without locks and our BREEZEWAY without even DOORS... one can see why my tiny brain was reveling in paranoia inside my little drowsy head. I'd wake up and tell Starling, "We need an alarm system and lots of locks."

THEN we moved INTO our little remodeled (and still in the process OF renovating)brick house and I watched the TV series "24." The BEST series was season whatever the contagious thing was. It gave me nightmares from the FIRST episode until three months after we finished the LAST episode. (It was WAY more intense and more AWESOME than Contagion but essentially the same story line...with a better ending... middle, and beginning...JUST saying...) I started dreaming that a contagious disease was infecting Oak Grove and Governent officials had sent the Health Officials, fully clothes in white jumpsuits with glass globes on their heads, to my house to quarantine Brooklyn. I REFUSED to let them take my angel away from me... SOOO they quarantined me, too. I sat in a room holding her... not wanting her to TOUCH anyone... but after being told the contagious disease was airborne and that if we were not immune than we already HAD the disease... quickly giving up on keeping our distance.. We became friends with the people in the giant plastic bubble. AND THEN we watched symptoms appear on them. First... a drop of blood from the nostril. (My dream was MUCH more graphic and disgusting than Contagion... it more resembled the rendition of 24). THEN boils began popping up all over the host's body. Everyday the spacesuit nazi would walk through and check each of us for bumps... If anyone showed ANY symptom- they were waltzed to the incenerator and burned because they were indeed infected. There was NO cure. AND they needed the space for the OTHERS that needed to be quaranteened. I noticed a bump on Brooklyn's legs... a mere mosquito bite... and I was FU-REAKING OUT! I kept trying to pull her shorts down a little to cover it up. I didn't want them to throw her in the fire. I'm not going to lie... I did not just WAKE up panicking... I BOLTED out of bed CRYING HYSTERICALLY. (Hmmm- I wonder why Brooklyn has such lucid nightmares... probably gets it from Starling).

Tonight Starling asked me out on a date. He took me to the movies (with the movie coupons we won at Doctor Cronin's Halloween Candy Buy Back.. LAST year). They were about to expire. ANYWAY- we saw Contagion.

Let me just say to all my church peeps... You know how we've been told REPEATEDLY to have a YEAR supply of food stored and to BE PREPARED for natural disasters, etc?? WELL- I do believe we should watch Contagion as a church activity THEN pass around the sign up sheet for going to the Store House Cannery. I think a LOT more people would SIGN up to get their Food Storage ON!!

Here are a few things we were discussing on the WAY to the theator:
Starling:"I want to build a huge playhouse for Brooklyn. Where would you like me to put it?"
Wendi: "Where ever you want... I want to bust out the brick in our room and make it twice as big. How hard would that be?"
Starling: "I was thinking of tearing down that lean-to off my shed and putting her playhouse there... In the air with a wrap around porch. And I can put stuff underneath. And we aren't tearing down the back of our house."
Wendi: "You want a two year old to climb ontop of the roof? How would she even DO that? Well can we at LEAST CUT a HOLE in the wall and ADD a GINORMOUS closet to hold all of our crap?"
Starling: "Brooklyn can climb a latter. OR stairs if you're so worried."
Wendi: "Stairs would be okay... with LOTS of railing! And the playhouse needs to have WALLS so that the kids can't FALL out of it. AND BARS on the windows so they don't climb out! And what about my closet??"
Starling: "YES it'll be SAFE. Its going to be AWESOME... the kids will be able to see the whole neighborhood from their little fort."
Wendi: "AND my CLOSET???"
Starling: "Uh.. you want a bigger closet? Uhh.. You want to try a caramel apple icecream from McD's? Its INCREDIBLE!"
Wendi: "Like a caramel apple sucker? That doesn't even sound remotely good to me."
Starling: "TRUST me! You'll like it."
Wendi: "No.. I want pretzel M&M's."

Here is the conversation on the ride HOME from the MOVIE:
Wendi: "Okay... I want to build a fall out shelter. How hard is that?"
Starling: "Dude... I need to buy more guns. We need to be able to scare off looters."
Wendi: "I have never been so motivated to do food storage in my LIFE! But I don't even know what to store!"
Starling: "We store sugar and flour and wheat."
Wendi: "Uhhh... how are we supposed to eat WHEAT?? What do you even DO WITH it??"
Starling: "You cook it! Like... into bread. You could learn to cook with wheat."
Wendi: "Learn to cook with wheat. LIKE I learned to cook meat? And pasta..."
Starling: "You're right. We're going to starve..."
Wendi: "NO... we can cook LIPTON noodles on your camp stove! We know how to do THAT!"
Starling: "Yeah... so long as rats don't find the Lipton before we need it."
Wendi: "Oh yeah... we should stick to cans. I know how to cook green beans and corn."

AND now we're making blue prints for an underground cement fort. You can call it EXTREME... or PREpARED... we're calling it.... PEACE of MIND. I WAS thinking we could just lock down our house and be all cozy until I saw all the crazy people busting out windows and shooting owners to get to their food... and medicine... THAT'S when I decided we needed to go underground in a secret location. I don't want to store a bunch of food and get dead.

Yeah. Wish me luck.