What Kind of Nut Are You?

The last three to four days have been very trying in the Cave household!  We have been without phones, and a steady working internet all weekend.  Just when a page would load the connection would drop and you were back at square one!  Which for me was speaking very evil things to a block of plastic.  Racey had tons of Chemistry homework that was all online, and I had plenty of online work that needed to be done for our new cottage industry we've started, and we just sat here staring at a little hourglass pretending like it was loading!  Let me tell you that is enough to drive this woman insane.

All this got me thinking about how "off the grid" we want to be and how far we have to go...  We have ditched our cable TV, DVD membership, online games (Xbox Live), cell phones, one car, credit cards etc., but the one thing we did keep was our internet.  This still seems like an essential tool for us.  It allows us to conduct business, pay bills, talk with friends and family, and pretty much entertain ourselves.  Most all of us remember when the internet became available to the common household.  It was something that was a pure luxury.  Life and business did not revolve it like it does today.  There is literately only a handful of things that you still have to do in person.  All this seems like a step forward for us but it all hinges on a few things... power, satellite communication, and

Now let me say that we claim to be many things in this household, from urban homesteaders, to frugal , to environmentally aware sustainable consumers to preppers.   The term prepper is a lose term for someone who prepares for the unwanted.  You have all shades of preppers from the Armageddon type to the ones who live in earth quake zones and want to have enough batteries and drinking water to last until help arrives.  We are somewhere in the middle.  We are not total nuts like say Walnuts, we are more the Legume variety like the p-nut!  This weekend reminded me that when normal life is interrupted for whatever reason you need to have back-ups in place.  For us it was something simple like lack of ability to communicate or conduct business, and in our modern culture this is something that doesn't have a easy solution, but there are things you can do to help you get through till things are up and running again.

Here is a list that will help me next time.

• Don't wait to the last minute to take care of things

• Have paper back-ups of phone numbers, account numbers, addresses (with direction if your GPS can't connect) 

• Patience... in large quanities!