Love is Not Pork Bellies

“The pork belly futures contract became an icon of futures and commodities trading.”


I don’t even understand that sentence, but I know it’s as American as apple pie futures. Here’s my take on it. Pigs have bellies. Pig bellies are finite, and that means it’s possible to run out of pork tummies. The price goes up. The price goes down, depending. People eat bacon. Right?

The problem is that the world gets to thinking that everything is bacon and might run out.

At our house it is not uncommon to hear comments like, “If your bacon has formed a pyramid on your plate, you have too much bacon. Put seven pieces of bacon back.”

Bacon, it’s finite. 

Love is not bacon.

As the grandparent of, soon to be, fourteen grandchildren, I feel confident making that statement. 

When we had our first baby I thought my feelings for him were like pork belly futures, limited and finite, and that I couldn’t possibly love anyone else the way I loved that rosy- cheeked little boy. But then we had a quiet, graceful little girl with huge blue eyes and the love got bigger—not smaller. 

Then came another daughter, with a feisty attitude and a smart mouth that made us laugh, followed by a son with an attitude so cheerful that it dazzled, and the love got bigger yet.

A friend of mine explained it like this. “Everyone in college is pretty sure that children will suck them dry. That’s what conventional wisdom teaches. That’s what society says. But I looked around and saw that ninety percent of everyone, in the end, wanted what I already had, even Madonna.”

“I can’t imagine life without her.” (Madonna the Singer, speaking of her first daughter)

I know. Right? And unlike pork bellies, love is one of those things that the more you get the more there is, and the more there is, the more you can have and the bigger it becomes. Love, it just never runs out. 


Linda (Love it Up) Zern 

I'll Scratch You All Over

The fourth brother in the grandkid gang was snotty, crying, dirty, and done. I pointed at it and told my daughter, “Take that one home, wash it, pat it, and put it to bed.”

The third brother in the gang felt that I had dissed his littlest brother. He began to mutter. His face closed like a fist.

I tried to interpret his three-year old muttering.

Nothing.

“Heather,” I said to my daughter, “what’s he saying?”

She listened for a while.

With more optimism and hope than knowledge she reported, “He’s saying, ‘I’ll love you forever.’”

Zac’s face now resembled angry granite. 

“Heather, look at his face. I don’t think he’s saying, ‘I’ll love you forever.’”

She sighed and then reported, “He’s saying, ‘I’ll scratch you all over.’”

Ah ha! That was more like it.

This incident typifies what I like to call the Wishful Thinking Syndrome. It was wishful thinking that Zac was waving a fond goodbye to his old YaYa with charming declarations of undying devotion. 

There’s a lot of Wishful Thinking Syndrome going around I’ve noticed.

It’s wishful thinking that professors who are busy trying to sell their books will be available to help you sell yours.

It’s wishful thinking that low self esteem, broken hearts, damaged egos, and sociopathic behavior can be fixed with quick cash. 

It’s wishful thinking that food without butter, salt, fat, and sugar is going to be as good as food with butter, salt, fat, and sugar.

It’s wishful thinking that bread and circuses are going to work forever. (See history of the Roman Empire)

It’s wishful thinking to believe that hot flashes will make you grow taller after age fifty or before age fifty.

It’s wishful . . . well, you get the picture.

Wishful thinking is a direct result of the modern notions that human beings deserve trophies for breathing, that buying a Wraptastic will change your life, and that everything billed as ‘based on a true story’ is true.

Get real. The three-year old kid is not telling you he’s going to love you forever—this time. This time he’s threatening to claw you with grubby fingernails. Sigh. It happens.

The news isn’t all bad, however. 

It is my hopeful wishful belief that for every busted thought-wish, there are those rare and dazzling moments when our wishful thoughts actually reflect reality and the kid is saying that he’s going to love you forever and the purchase of a Wraptastic does, in fact, change your life. But those moments are both rare and dazzling, which makes reality way better than wishful thinking—sort of like having a unicorn to ride to the free puppy store.

Linda (Scratch Resistant) Zern

FOR THE LOVE OF BUCKETS AND PREPARING OUR FAMILIES

NOTE:  It's a new blog about prepping and preparation and good ideas and emergency preparedness and buckets . . . of course . . .

www.beyondthestrandline.blogspot.com

HERE'S A SAMPLE:

Mindy’s been talking about water and water got me to thinking about carrying water and carrying water has me thinking of buckets, and what if water didn’t flow out of my faucet or into my tub with a twist of a handle, and I had to carry it from here to there; how would I do it?

Buckets.

Or build a Roman aqueduct.

But buckets seem a more reasonable solution.

One of the truly delightful consequences of writing a novel like Beyond the Strandline is the opportunity to play the “what if” game. It’s eye opening.

What if the water stopped? Tess Lane and her sisters carry water from their deep water well in buckets, catch water in rain barrels, and are constantly boiling water to keep it and their surroundings clean. Water from a safe well would be safe as long as the containers used to transport it were clean.  

Three days without water and it’s a done deal and not just any water, clean water, water that would need to be boiled to be drinkable if it were from an open water source: creek, pond, river, lake. According to Livestrong.com, open waterways contain: “The hardy giardia and other disease-causing bacteria, known generally as coliform bacteria, can survive outside the body for months, spreading water-borne disease from animals or humans. Several common culprits cause symptoms that may range from mild indigestion to diarrhea, dehydration and death.”

Yucky. And that's an official prepping term.

 

The closest place I can think of to get water in an emergency would be the swampy area at the back of our property. A little digging and we would have a mucky pond, but that’s not next to my kitchen sink. Believe me. I’d need a bucket and not just any bucket but a bucket that could be kept clean, really clean: germ resistant, heat resistant, drop-on-the-ground resistant.

Plastic. Galvanized. Ancient. Battered. I took a good look at the buckets we use around the farm and realized that I wouldn’t trust them to put mud in, let alone my water.

Plastic buckets are inexpensive, but they don’t hold up. They crack and aren’t very sturdy.

And galvanized buckets corrode, good for feed, seed, and eggs. I’m not sure a corroded bucket would be my first pick for carrying my family’s water.

I’m thinking that a seamless, stainless steel bucket would be best, the kind of buckets recommended for milk, the kind you could sterilize, food grade. Milk buckets are made without seams so that there’s no place for the germs to grow. They’re designed to stand up to heat. Could I boil the water in the bucket? 

It’s settled. I’m going to do some more research and find out more about buckets.

It’s what happens when you write books; you start to think about things you might not have thought about before. Like buckets. How handy they can be. How much you’d miss them if you didn’t have one when you needed it.

And if you did have a big enough bucket to drag water back to the house then what would you boil the water in? Tea kettles. Too small. Wash tubs. Too big. Cast iron . . . hmmmm . . .  

And so it goes. Before you know it, you have a novel . . . or some new buckets.

Linda (Bucket Brigade) Zern