Taking Stock

I have been reading books about food security, or preparing for a crisis in order to ride out an unforeseen predicament such as severe weather, natural disasters, power outages, and the like. The government has sent out brochures with a list of things to do in case of emergency, directing me to websites I can visit for more information in case I don’t understand the imminent danger I may be in if I don’t have enough canned food and medical supplies on hand. I have tried to heed these instructions but have only prepared half-heartedly. I admire those people living off the grid who will still be able to make toast and watch movies as if nothing has changed, and I will envy those who shop at warehouse stores with their 24-pack of spaghetti sauce and six-month supply of toilet paper. Who will be laughing then? I am much too reliant on a business-as-usual atmosphere that has numbed me into thinking only too little about how I would get along without easy access to utilities and groceries. Right now, a world wide web of information is at my fingertips, light is at a flick of a switch, cool air washes over me in summer while warm air surrounds me when snowflakes are falling outside. Stores are open every day, I can walk or bike easily within my little town, and for the most part, I’m not worried about my personal safety. I may not be living my best life but all signs point to an easy one.

We cleared out a large walk-in closet near the kitchen to use as a pantry and my intention is to store the items we’ll need to sustain ourselves if the time comes. I have an inkling that not many of us are prepared for even a 24-hour crisis by the heavy crowds at the grocery store the day before it closes for a statutory holiday. When non-perishables are on sale, I try to stock up, then use the FIFO method to make sure I don’t poison my family with the bacteria build-up from a long-ago expiry date. Although, I usually don’t have to worry about which foods have been there the longest because we tend to finish off any food in the house long before First In, First Out would take effect.

On my list of things to get are: food-grade pails for bulk storage, a surplus car battery, and a first-aid kit. I imagine water will be our utmost concern. They recommend filling up your tub as soon as an emergency strikes although I’m not sure how desperate I’d have to be to drink from it. We do keep a case of water bottles handy but since they expire after several months, we have to use them up in the privacy of our home so as not to seem environmentally insensitive. 

A loss of electricity would become uncomfortable to say the least. A power loss in winter would make for chilly nights, unless you know someone with a gas fireplace who wouldn’t mind sharing sleeping space with you. Note to self: get a gas fireplace. And did you know your toilets need electricity to operate? After a while, the local water pumping station will lose pressure and you will be unable to flush unless you want to use your precious supply of water to fill the tank manually. I guess there’s always the woods out back.

When our conventional food supply runs out, our weeds will no longer be the bane of my gardening existence, as I’ve written about previously. The pioneers who plagued us with edible non-native plants such as dandelion will seem like geniuses. Note to self: cordon off area for outdoor potty away from lawn. A creek runs through our backyard that we may be able to use as a drinking source if I overlook possible pesticide run-off from upstream. Note to self: get a water-test kit. I could forage for berries in the summer, and although my DVR recording of Know Your Mushrooms won’t be operational, I’ve gleaned enough information to make a go at it, if need be. What I really need is to have a good old-fashioned book with pictures to tell me how to prepare my native plants to make them non-toxic and digestible. The deer feast on them like a buffet every year so I’ll have to finally stand my ground and fend them off.

I’ll regret not listening to my husband when he wanted to buy a generator but we don’t live in the sticks and the only time we’ve lost power for more than an hour was when everyone on the eastern seaboard did in 2003, so on my list of emergency-preparedness priorities, it’s right after getting a Canadian flag to hang upside down while in distress on open water.

If the...you know what...really hits the fan, we’ll use our renovation supplies to seal off the house with 6 mil plastic and duct tape. I’m glad I live in Canada where our cultural tendencies toward politeness and passiveness will keep the peace for a length of time. And my strong husband was always handy for moving furniture but I’ll look at his broad shoulders in a whole new light. Unlike the Americans, we’ll be kicking ourselves for not packing heat all along. Of course, if the chaos got that bad, I may just want to kiss this world good-bye and leave my supply of canned sardines for another sucker.

A Good Investment

There are only two things I’ve ever wanted out of my life: a family and a home to keep them in. What I didn’t know was that these two things come at a price: a price per pound and a price per square foot.

According to Manitoba Agriculture, the national average in Canada for raising a child is $191,665. In the U.S. the cost to raise a child born in 2010 is $226,920 (higher to account for healthcare costs and interestingly, an additional $10,000 is allotted for food expense). This does not include post-secondary education but does include full-time daycare costs for the first twelve years, an expense we didn’t have to incur the full brunt of. The report also claimed a bulk discount for more than one child but, in our experience, we received no discount for two kids in braces at the same time, school pictures every September for two students, or two hockey players every season. Thank goodness for hand-me-downs because we had one girl and one boy so clothes sharing wasn’t as easy but at least they were born far enough apart that we didn’t need double of the same item.

I`m not sure knowing the full cost would deter people from having a kid. There will always be sacrifices when raising children, regardless of your circumstances. It depends on your personality, priorities, and amount of patience. For me, I gave up earning potential but was present for every milestone and fulfilled one of my deepest desires.

As for the home part, we are slow renovators and take our time to build up supplies and collect unique pieces, keeping a clear vision of the final product but incorporating new ideas when brilliance strikes, making it our own—not unlike our parenting style—slowly making it to the finish line, if there is one. It’s easy to be overly optimistic about the outcome. There are always more issues than you planned on tackling behind the walls, the costs will be higher than anticipated, the job is messy and tiring, and mistakes will be made along the way as lessons are learned.

Anything deemed to have potential means it will need work to get there and moving into a fixer-upper has its drawbacks. This lifestyle is not for everyone. You have to mentally block out the stack of tiles bought in fit of optimism that are so heavy they will never be moved from the corner until they finally get installed. I would like to see a law against selling the pink carpet picked out by the previous owners that clashed with the yellow vinyl floor and 60’s orange carpet that worked like a pedicure when you walked over it in bare feet. A little overenthusiastic, I tore off the harvest green felt wallpaper the week we moved in as well as the rest of the wallpaper in the house but, unfortunately the paper was glued directly to unprimed walls so every wall needed to be...or still needs to be... re-drywalled; on the bright side, we can update the R-value while we’re at it, and you must always look on the bright side to keep from pulling your hair out. Misguided updates over the lifespan of our house left wonky ceramic tiles, forest green paint over grass cloth wallpaper, and a deck railing that prevents a window from opening. We knew there would be a day when we no longer had a bathroom with blue fixtures but I didn’t know it would be nine years later, leaving the pink fixtures in our principal bath for the foreseeable future.

I like watching renovation shows but quietly resent the reveals done in TV time with little acknowledgement of how many professionals were behind the scenes. I stopped reading decorating magazines when one revealed the true cost of its featured bathroom: $40,000. I think an entire university education is more important than a fancy showerhead, I’m sure you’d agree. I also couldn’t see another piece of old-growth hardwood painted over in white so that it resembles the MDF anyone could buy at the store. Those designers are taking the easy way out instead of being creative (and then say that you can always change it back...they have obviously never stripped wood before; it’s a time-consuming and detailed job using dangerous chemicals).

The elbow grease needed for every project is an understatement but eventually we`ll have what we`ve always wanted, and in the meantime, have spent as much time as possible with our kids while they’re still living with us. Part of what makes our home a welcoming place is that it’s lived in, if not a little rough around the edges, and it’s about the people inside, not the curb appeal. Overall, I think we`ve made a good investment in our future.

Money Pit

If you have children and own a house, I have no doubt these two words have crossed your mind several times: Money Pit. I need only write these three syllables down as my title on the top of a blank page and a novel can be produced with a list of what our house needs inside, what our house needs outside, and the number of renovation projects that have been started with a footnote at the bottom as to the number that have been completed: two. And, needless to say, the two rooms of the house that have been renovated to completion each belong to members of the family who contribute no income, who show no appreciation for our efforts, who can immediately sniff out a pristine area of the house for immediate destruction, and who don’t hesitate to ask for more.   

Yes, most days I love this house and yes, by law, I’m required to care for these children but I shouldn’t secretly desire a trip to the mental hospital to lessen the number of things driving me crazy in close proximity.

Just like kids, renovation projects start small and then quickly become all-encompassing monsters that wipe your energy and clean out your bank account. It all started with one little project at our first house; we decided to upgrade our kitchen with a discount sink tap we found at a flea market. When we thought about it more, that new faucet was going to make its surroundings look dingy so we decided we might as well change the old laminate countertop from its faux butcher-block pattern to a speckled grey one, still laminate but there was only so much money to go around and this was BK—before kids. The kitchen walls no longer matched the countertop so they needed to be painted, and the curtains were next, and so on. Not long after that, we were given yards and yards of used luxury carpet that we thought would look great in our finished basement, and while we’re at it, we should upgrade the windows and drywall the ceiling...you see where this is going. In addition, just to make one more obvious point, the baby’s room was the first room to be fully finished and decorated in that house, too.

After selling our first house, we banished the illusions of home ownership while we rented a row house in a suburb of Toronto and welcomed a son to our family. We thought we were ahead of the game having already acquired all the necessities we would need for the second child—I now long for the days when diapers were the most expensive thing on our shopping list. As your kids grow,  you send them to school, you enrol them in lessons, you sign them up for activities, and when they are at home you provide on-site entertainment in the form of movies, toys, video games, books, crafts, board games, and sports equipment. Do you want your child to go on the field trip? That’ll be $20. Do you want to watch the hockey game your kid is playing in? That’ll be $3. You don’t want your child’s potential to be squandered, do you? That’ll be $15 for half an hour of music lessons. Do you want one night off this month from cooking? That’ll be $35 for pizza, $70 if you dare go to a restaurant. I would mention the full cost of braces for two children but I may frighten the weak-hearted. Your refrigerator will look like a revolving door, your house will look like a cyclone hit it, and although they purport to be concerned with the environment, they have no regard for the electricity bill. Most of the on-going purchases needed to keep them occupied and fully-supplied, will still be in as-new condition when your kids outgrow them or become bored with them, if they didn’t break within the first 24 hours—at least diapers were well used before you threw them out.

A few years later, when it was time to move on or set up camp, we considered our rental house, built only eight years ago at the time, with its postage stamp-size rooms, flimsy windows and cardboard box walls, and the $210,000 asking price, and said no, thanks. It was at this time, with our memories of the blood, sweat, and tears of home renovation fading, we cheerfully bought another house; the thought process not unlike how we decided to have another kid...well, the first one wasn’t so bad, how much harder could it get?

Although my first impression of our potential home was simply noted on my checklist as scary, we went back for a second look and decided this house had good bones, unique features, a nice location, and, for the right price, was a bargain for the square footage. We wanted this house to raise our kids in, who were seven and three at the time, and we knew we could make a home here.

That was the moment when a black hole formed in our universe and began to suck us dry.

Next month, part 2.