libertybelle diaries

My blog started out being mostly politics, but it’s become a lot of prepping these days. I think the food shortages, inflation, and economic turmoil are going to be the most important events for most of us in the foreseeable future.

The media right now and many of the online prepper and news sites are on Ukraine and WWIII – yada, yada, yada.

The situation in Ukraine escalated and I don’t have a prediction on what Putin will do next or how far he’ll go, but I feel confident in saying that the Biden White House will be slow to respond in an effective way to deter him. The night before last, I saw that the Biden White House was insisting that Putin moving into the two breakaway areas of Ukraine wouldn’t be an “invasion,” because it didn’t go beyond Putin’s 2014 incursion. By yesterday morning, the Germans finally agreed to sanctions on the NordStream2 pipeline with Russia, so the Biden WH changed their word game and decided that Putin’s action was an invasion. Same goes with sanctions against Russia. The Biden White House promised swift and severe sanctions, but now it’s looking more like slow and incremental sanctions.

I wish Biden would let the Keystone pipeline continue and unfreeze all the fossil fuel restrictions he put in place here. Instead, his spokespeople are playing word games, blaming what happened in Ukraine two days ago for the rising gas prices that have been hitting Americans for the past year. It’s all total bullshit coming from this White House. The Ukraine situation may well exacerbate the problems, but they didn’t cause the months of rising gas prices.

Everything in our politics and news media is idiotic word games. As an aside, I found it somehow fitting that the Twitter politics journalist and pundit class recently became obsessed with some stupid actual word game, Wordle. The developer sold the rights to the game to the NYT recently and now the Wordle crowd started complaining that the NYT is ruining the game. Yep, Wordle, sounds about right for the professional spin crowd…

And no, I don’t care what stupid comments Trump made calling Putin a genius. Trump will say whatever he thinks will fuel the right vs. left spin war in America and promote himself. Trump only cares that he is the main topic of conversation in the news. He uses the negative liberal media backlash to play the victim card for his supporters and it works. The bottom-line though is nothing Trump says will change any policy in the Biden White House. I’m just sick of all of the partisan politics and the extreme partisan politics will likely cause more turmoil. It sure won’t help make anything better in America.

None of us watching this can change any of the politics or what’s happening in Ukraine. The only people we can change or control is ourselves. I don’t have any brilliant takes on Ukraine and frankly, with so much information hitting us from so many directions, I have no idea what’s really going on in Ukraine. Lots of people online claim to have inside sources or connections, who are telling them – this, that or the other.

I don’t have any inside line, so I’m focusing on what I think matters to ordinary people. And what matters most is encouraging people to stock up as much as they can afford to each time they go to the grocery store. Stock up on other supplies too, especially necessary medical supplies. And at the same time try to put some money aside for the looming inflation that’s most likely going to get a lot worse.

Here’s a common sense video on the situation:

Nothing will return to normal anytime soon in America seems like a safe bet.

Since the Biden WH is coming under fire for their handling of the Ukraine crisis, as soon as possible, I expect they and the liberal media will flip to a new narrative – either Trump hysteria or the truckers protest that’s supposed to start. They will want to flip the narrative, so I’m not getting all worked up about Ukraine., because I suspect Putin will do what he wants in Ukraine (and possibly elsewhere) and Biden and the West will pay lip service to sanctions, but do as little to respond as possible. As quickly as they stopped talking about their Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, is how I expect them to try to deal with Ukraine.

I was a stay-at-home mom during my husband’s military career and when he decided to retire, our kids were older and I decided to get a job outside the home. I worked at Walmart a number of years and stayed as an hourly associate. During my years there I was a department manager of fabrics and crafts, department manager of the over-the-counter pharmacy, department manager of lawn and garden, department manager of hardware and also a zone merchandising supervisor, where I was responsible for the homelines area of the store and then I was asked to take over as the zone merchandising supervisor of the hardlines side of the store. I left Walmart in 2015, because my husband’s health had declined to the point it was no longer safe for him to be home alone for hours at a time.

I’m not an expert on anything – not foreign policy, not domestic policy, not politics – although I am interested in these things. However, I am very familiar with how Walmart stores operate and since Walmart is the largest retailer in America and the world, I’m going to mention some concerns with the shortage situations I’m seeing in my area. Merchandise arrives at Walmart stores in several ways – via Walmart trucks that come from Walmart warehouses, shipped from vendors directly, and some comes from vendors, who come to the store and stock their merchandise on the shelves themselves. There’s also merchandise in a few areas that was always slow coming in, that was called assembly merchandise that came from the warehouse, but took much longer to come in from suppliers than regular warehouse merchandise. Fabrics and crafts had a lot of assembly merchandise.

When I walk through my local Walmart stores in the past few months, I’ve noticed growing shortage problems, especially in vendor-stocked items – like soda, the bread aisle, the Debbie snack cake section is usually almost completely empty most of the time. When I worked at Walmart vendors always wanted more shelf space and space for displays and that they can’t even maintain stock on there regular spaces now was a red flag to me.

In a store, the end of aisle display areas (end caps is the term used in Walmart) are prime real estate and you want to keep your end caps filled up and looking nice, because that’s what people see first. I’ve noticed there are usually a whole lot of nearly empty end caps or end caps that are basically faked out – with little merchandise spread across the front of the shelves. Often feature displays of all sorts arrive in the store and when I worked there, department managers would order items that sell well for end cap displays too. What caught my notice was that there’s so many end caps that are skimpy so often, plus there are always many skimpy sections of shelves throughout the stores, yet there are always associates busy stocking.

I suspect the shortage problems are widespread and affecting all sorts of areas in our retail food supply. It’s not just a single problem that’s causing these shortages. The vendors seem to be having supply problems and the Walmart warehouse system also seems to be having problems. Other retail grocery chains are having shortage problems too.

I have already started some seeds indoors and I’ve got some cold hardy vegetables started on my patio. I plan to set up two raised beds when my son has time to come help me with that. Years ago, before my husband became ill, we had a nice size vegetable garden. My soil here is mostly sand and clay. It took a few years of constantly amending the soil before my garden produced a decent amount. Southeast GA a lot of years has drought conditions and if you’re on municipal water, then there are usually water restrictions in the summer too, which impacts gardening. Last summer was a lot of rain and my backyard was often like soup for days on end. There are also a myriad of bugs and plant diseases here that can turn your thriving vegetables into a dead zone overnight sometimes.

While I would love to grow enough fresh vegetables for myself, I’m not banking on this new gardening effort. I am continuing to stock up – especially canned goods. I also dehydrate a lot of things – especially frozen vegetables, which are still available and economical. I learned how to do that online. It works, it’s easy and I can use that freezer space for other items. The dehydrated vegetables can be stored in jars, in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, or food saver bags. I suppose you could also use ziploc bags if you didn’t have any of the other options available.

Everywhere you look more serious problems in our food chain seem looming, so I think it makes sense to stock up, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to learn more skills and try as many ways as you can to be more self-reliant.

If you’re a person who waits for the government or “experts” to tell you economic problems are worsening or it’s time to stock up, I suspect you’ll be in for a rude awakening when reality hits you. I’m not saying panic or build a bunker, I am saying put some effort into stocking up extra food and water on a regular basis. And by all means try to come up with as many options as you can for sourcing food in your area, beyond the retail grocery stores.

While I understand the desire to be totally self-reliant and not dependent on other people, the reality is we are all a part of many systems in our modern life. Emergency preparedness for people with special medical needs and special dietary needs got me looking for more detailed information back in 2020 and despite my criticisms here and there of some online prepping advice, overall I have learned a great deal from the YouTube prepper community and the homesteading community. Although these are two separate communities, there are some overarching topics between the two and both communities push learning to be self-reliant and learning more skill sets.

Everyone’s got to have water, food, clothes, shelter, but if you or a loved one have special medical or dietary needs, emergency preparedness becomes a lot more complicated. Despite my desire to always try to be as self-reliant as possible, in 2020, I realized just how challenging life could be during an emergency situation with my husband unable to even get out of the bed hospice brought and needing assistance with everything. Many days he couldn’t even sit up in bed without help. I’m going to explain some challenges and some of the things I learned and some things I probably should have done differently.

First and foremost, many preppers talk about go bags or bug out bags, which is a bag that has emergency supplies for each member of the family in case you have to evacuate your home. There are many excellent videos and information online on things to consider packing. If you or a member of your family require special medical equipment or a member in your household has mobility problems, the basic bug out bag will not be adequate and neither will the get-home bag, preppers recommend you have in your car. Often people with special needs require a whole lot more equipment and necessities than can fit in a bag.

Before my husband was on hospice care, he had been dependent on a walker for several years and then a few years before hospice care, he had become almost completely wheelchair-bound. He could take a step or two with the walker to get him into the wheelchair some of the time, but at other times he needed assistance to get on his feet and move at all. So, even leaving the house required some prior planning. Going anywhere by myself also required prior planning, because he could not be left home alone due to dementia and mobility problems. I had to arrange grocery shopping or my doctor’s appointments so that my son could be here with my husband.

If you or someone in your home has special needs, it’s going to require thinking through some emergency preps beyond the basic bags and supplies. If the special needs involve home oxygen, medications that require refrigeration, and other special arrangements, this creates an even greater need to think through how you would handle an emergency evacuation from your home and leaving your vehicle, to set off on foot, might not even be a possibility.

Watching unfolding emergency situations closely in your area becomes imperative and you might need to contact officials in your area for advice or assistance, depending on the situation. You definitely can’t be a lone wolf type prepper if you’re dealing with special needs.

Hurricanes are a common weather emergency where I live and we dealt with one hurricane evacuation a few years before 2020. Once the weather reports put us in the cone of uncertainty, I started thinking about plans to evacuate and did not hem and haw. I coordinated with other family members and I needed my two sons to help me with my husband and the pets. We evacuated early and did not wait until the last minute.

My husband was put on home hospice care in late January 2020 and at first there were 3 nurse visits a week and 3 CNA visits a week to help with his care, but once the pandemic craziness started things changed quickly. The CNA visits stopped completely and the nurse visits went to one home visit a week and one phone visit. I felt overwhelmed with that level of caregiving required for someone completely bed-bound, but the hospice nurses were very willing to offer advice and suggestions, plus they had a 24-hour number and a nurse on call for emergencies, which I did have to call one weekend.

One day the power went off during an afternoon thunderstorm and it was off almost an hour. My initial thought was, “Oh shit, what am I going to do now,” but I took a deep breath and calmed down. My husband was on home oxygen, so I switched him to one of the portable tanks of oxygen and I began monitoring the power company’s outage app on my cell phone, to follow when power was expected to be restored. Another time, late on a Sunday night, the oxygen machine started beeping loudly and it died. I called the emergency service number on the machine and the man from the medical supply company arrived within an hour with another machine.

There was also an afternoon of bad storms, where we were under a tornado watch and I spent hours sitting by my husband’s bed pondering how on earth to get him to the main bathroom if a tornado hit, because that’s the safest space in our house. I kept looking at the window in the room and wondering what would be the best thing to do if a tornado touched down. I messaged one of my daughters, who lives in another state, to see if she had any ideas, because I was thinking perhaps if I put a blanket on the floor, I could slide him off the bed onto the floor and pull him to the bathroom using the blanket. My daughter suggested getting him on the floor and covering both of us up with a blanket and the mattress from the hospice bed. Thankfully, no tornado touched down.

The pandemic craziness brought shortages in stores, which I had never even thought about happening in America. Prior to this I did not pay close attention to how much medication we had on-hand, I just called in a refill when my medicine or my husband’s began to look low. I began paying close attention to both my medication and my husband’s medications and supplies. My doctor gives me a 90 day supply, so if you can get a 90-day supply it is important to try to keep as large of a supply of your prescription medications as possible. I also refilled my prescriptions as early as possible. I coordinated with the hospice nurses and they used FedEx to deliver my husband’s medications the next day.

With all the supplies that hospice ordered and our insurance covered, I also found these supplies online and ordered extra and paid for them myself – from chux, to wipes, to depends, etc. If you have over-the-counter medications or medical supplies you use regularly, it’s best to build up a supply now, if you haven’t already done that, as shortage situations are increasing again and the political and world situations are entering a very uncertain time.

Talk to your doctor about concerns. Talk to family members and friends about your concerns or special needs, whether it be medication, equipment, help with tasks around the house, and especially talk about and ask for advice before there’s an emergency. Make sure they know details about your situation and if you’re unsure about your planning or how to handle situations seek out help and information.

There’s even professional information on YouTube. I found a YouTube channel, Dementia Careblazers, an invaluable source of information on caring for my husband and dealing with many of the challenges, especially the year he was on hospice care. Many times when I was at my wit’s end dealing with some of my husband’s difficult dementia behaviors or bewildered with it, Dr. Natali’s videos helped me figure out how to cope with it and find strategies that helped. While this information wasn’t emergency preparedness information per se, it sure helped me understand the special needs involved with dementia.

While all the basics of emergency preparedness apply to people with special medical and dietary needs, it’s really imperative to put extra focus on the special supplies and assistance you will likely need in an emergency situation and think ahead as much as possible. With the world situation and a trucker’s protest set to begin in the US in a few days, this could lead to more shortages or disruptions in shipping and availability of supplies.

I strongly encourage anyone with special medical or dietary needs to sit down, take inventory of those supplies and make a list of items to stock up on.

Being diabetic, storing 50 lbs. of rice won’t work for me, because rice shoots my blood sugar sky-high. What I’ve been doing is working on losing weight, working to keep my blood sugar under control and while stocking up is a little more challenging, it’s not impossible. I have a lot of frozen vegetables and items I do eat stocked up. I also have canned goods and a couple years ago I started dehydrating a lot of vegetables. I hope to grow some fresh vegetables of my own this spring and summer, but if that doesn’t work out as planned, there are many local farmers nearby, farmers markets and also some farms in the area do “pick your own,” where you can go pick vegetables or fruit at their farm. I’ve picked blueberries here many times at a local farm.

Try to think about and figure out more options for your specific situation and I believe the most important one is sharing your concerns and talking them over with family and friends and don’t hesitate to seek out more information or advice, if you’re not sure what to do.

Ask lots of questions rather than sit and worry or let yourself feel overwhelmed. This is something that took me some time to get used to doing, because I like to think of myself as independent.

Tomorrow I will have a blog post about some thoughts on prepping supply challenges for people with special needs. With supply shortage problems escalating, I strongly believe anyone with special medical needs or special dietary needs should really put extra effort into thinking ahead and stocking up on supplies.

In 2020, I took personal preparedness much more seriously, because my husband was placed on home hospice care in late January 2020 and completely bed-bound until he died last year. I am an insulin-dependent diabetic and have heart problems, so I put a lot more effort into prepping supplies.

If you wait for someone else to come take care of everything for you, in this shortage environment, you may find your problems way more critical much faster than you can’t find your favorite brand of a particular food item or toilet paper.

If you have special needs, I highly recommend you move your prepping efforts, of not only basic supplies, but as many of the supplies specific to your special needs, into high gear. I’ll jot down some things I learned throughout this pandemic in tomorrow’s post.