I lead a fairly active life, more than most, but probably not as active as I should be. My work consists of heavy lifting, bending, twisting, and can you believe it, swimming. My physical health is an important part of my work, so if I get ill for any reason, I cannot work, and being self-employed, no work means no income.

Recently, I was diagnosed with a hernia, and the only solution is surgery. It is scheduled for next Tuesday. This means I’ll be down and out for two to three weeks minimum, and as long as five weeks before I am completely released to resume all activities. It has to be done, and sooner is better than later. Time to “get r’ done” is now!

We are fortunate that my wife has a decent job, and can cover most of our bills alone. “Most” doesn’t cut it though when playing the game of life. Making ends meet become damned near impossible when one spouse loses ALL income. My income usually covers car expenses (gas, maintenance, etc), food, and whatever we save each month.  So what can I do?

Not worry. And the question you should ask isn’t “What can I do?”, but rather “What have I done?”. Being ready for a local disaster, namely hurricanes, means that I’m also mostly ready for many other bumps in the Road of Life. Things I’ve set aside for hurricane aftermath can also be used for surgery aftermath. We will have food, water, shelter, and enough money saved up to cover the other things I usually cover.

Will we get tired of eating the same things over and over? Eventually, sure. But we have stocked enough variety, and know how to cook with it, so that it would take a lot longer than a month to get tired of what we have. Cooking is another prepping skill everyone should have in order to get through the hard times. Since the wife and I love to cook, and have practiced “eat what you store, store what you eat”, the food aspect of my down time won’t be much of an issue.

This will be more of a strain on me in the fact that for several days I won’t be able to get around much. I’ll also be on painkillers, so I’ll be having the wife approve (or disapprove!) anything I write before it gets posted. My writing rambles enough when I’m clean and sober. No need to scare anyone away… Maybe she’ll do a guest post or two, “Life of a city girl married to a prepping hillbilly”! I treat this blog as a job, something I have to do every weekday, and once in a while get called in to do something on weekends. As far as posts, I’ll do what I can.

The good news is that I’ll be able to get up and move around fairly well in a week to ten days. I’ve already made some arrangements for working with help to try to keep as busy as possible without pushing myself too much. Should be interesting. I believe the will to keep pushing will get me back up and going faster than wallowing around in my own self-pity. Life goes on, I wanna go on with it.
Are you?In short, we will be OK, not because we were lucky, but because we invested time, effort, and money into getting ready for the eventuality of something going wrong. You might say we made our own luck. Either way, we are ready for life to happen.

Peace,

db