Getting through tough times

Until recently, my whole working-aged family was unemployed, and in fact, although I have a new job (which OMGILOVEIT), we haven't gotten our first paycheck yet. And my benefits don't kick in for 3 more months, so we're still living kinda close to the bone. I was pleased to find, though, that the lifestyle towards which we've been moving was very, very helpful to our ability to cope with unemployment. I suspect I'll ruminate on this occasionally for many months to come. But here are some of my initial thoughts on the matter. [Edit: now that I've done a draft of this and am re-reading it, I see that this post has little to do with out lifestyle adaptation per se, but is still important info IMHO.]

First, to optimally prepare for unemployment, or any interruption in your regular income, having a year or more's warning is highly recommended. This is another way of saying that we had a really unfair advantage with respect to unemployment--I've never seen anyone with more warning than we had. Since my husband is an academic, and they hire on annual cycles, cutting his position was a known early on. Further, due to the wording in the standard contract (also a result of the annual academic hiring cycle not lining up nicely with the annual academic firing cycle) we had a little over a full calendar year to prepare. And further still, because of the way my husband's pay was structured, we were payed for two months after we had technically become unemployed (this included benefits). Even allowing for this, we were without income for six months, and we are still without benefits (except for our children, who are on state aid). So what's the message here? My take-home is that everyone pretty much needs to assume that you're going to lose your job, and plan accordingly. Let me be clear here--I don't think we would have been able to keep our house, stay in our town, avoid moving in with parents, etc., without the warning we had. If you have no reason to believe that you will get one year's warning (and crap, who could expect that?), the only way to cope with the situation is to assume you'll be fired soon. Sorry. (You probably won't be fired soon, so try to avoid the attendant fear and nausea that goes with imminent firing--compartmentalize, ya know?)

Second, find and USE every single state or federal benefit you possibly can. They are there for a reason. Too much pride? Swallow it. Maybe if it's just you, make your own decisions and suffer or not as suits you. But if you have a family, I genuinely believe that there is a moral question about how one will deal with a lack of income when your family may suffer as a result, and my response to this question is that pride can take a back seat (or get shoved in the trunk). Without sufficient income, children are at risk of malnutrition and all of the attendant issues, including behavioral and educational problems, which even mild malnourishment can bring. A lack of insurance can cause families to avoid needed doctor's visits, often exacerbating otherwise simple problems. And this is not just for the children--families are not improved by a parent being out of commission (or worse) due to an illness that could have been dealt with by early care.

There are also the penumbral problems of the stresses brought about by losing one's income. Can you stay healthy through the constant stress? How's your blood pressure now? How's your immune system--can it make it through the added stress? How will you deal with job-hunting when you are constantly getting sick due to an AWOL immune system fleeing from all the stress? Can your marriage or partnership survive near-nightly battles over money? Jobs? Income? Spending? Even if your partnership is very stable, a money crisis can spell doom--don't let it (or at least, do everything you can to not let it). Social safety net programs are there to help people keep from falling too low, and to give you some breathing room, so that you're not panicking every time you think about needing to buy groceries, or when your kid wants to go roller skating and you know you can't afford the soon-to-follow leg break and treatment. They help keep you and your family healthy and whole--not sick and divorced. Use them. And if someone gives you flack, tell them to fuck off, you are taking care of your family.

I would strongly suggest finding all of the programs that are even vaguely applicable to your situation now--yes now--while you still have a job and an income. Consider this just another part of the "assume you'll be fired" scenario above. Speaking for my own state, there is a morass of programs available, complete with attendant paperwork, all of which is very difficult to sort through. Don't try to do this when you're on the edge of losing a job, or worse, have already lost one. From my own experience, once we knew we were going to lose our jobs, I got very panicky and depressed. Panic and depression can lead to many places, but rational behavior is rarely one of them. So even though I knew we would soon need these programs, I didn't research them. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. And so I put them off and off and off until holyshitweNEEDthemnow--whatdoIdo?!?! That's not the best head-space to be in when attempting to navigate government bureaucracy. Really. So do it now, when the biggest part of your brain can truthfully say "Dude, I'm not actually getting fired, I'm just doing this as, like, an academic exercise--maybe in case one of my friends gets fired or something, so I can help them. Yeah!" I don't care how you have to trick yourself, but find a way to do this work now.

Don't believe me? Feel confident about how you would access aid programs? Okay. Do you know what the income cutoffs are for food stamps? What kind of documentation do you need from your employer in order to claim unemployment insurance? Does your doctor/family healthcare person take state insurance? Is there a medical insurance program available for adults in your state--and if so, what are the requirements? What are the requirements for WIC? What is WIC? Can you get both TANF and WIC at the same time? Which state departments handle TANF, WIC, unemployment and Medicaid? Are there prescription programs available to avoid interruption of needed medications? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you need to find them. It is too, too, too easy to miss out on an important program that could have genuinely benefited your family by just not being familiar with the offerings. And moreover, it is even easier to accidentally screw yourself out of one program by not knowing its details and either missing a deadline or putting something on an application to program A which would cause issues with program B. Oh, and by the way, all of this paperwork will take you at least a month to get through, even if you know what you're doing, so familiarizing yourself with this stuff now is really not a bad idea. Have you ever heard someone say "It's a good thing that I'm unemployed, because claiming unemployment insurance is a full-time job!" Well, that's not actually a joke.

True story: our state offers adult health coverage for families under a certain income level. After having been on unemployment insurance for months, with children on medicaid and making applications for numerous other programs, I had absolutely no idea this was available. Now, it's not the best insurance in the world--"cadillac" it ain't--but it's a damned sight better than my husband's leg going gangrenous because he refuses to go to the hospital for care because we can't afford it. Now, as it happens, we have not missed the window on this, and that's lucky for us. This is what comes of wading through welfare programs when stressed out--don't do it! Start now! Trust me!

Okay, for my next post on this, I will actually address how our lifestyle helped out. Promise! =]

Short-term vs. permanent: or, uh, dude? Why are you storing water?

It sure seems like if one is prepared for the long emergency, then wouldn't one also, by default, be prepared for a short-term emergency, too? I think the answer is no. I think there's a difference, at least in my current life, between being prepared for short-term emergencies and the long emergency. While there's an awful lot of overlap between the two, there are still some different constraints that each operates under.

The overlaps are so many and varied that I'd have trouble listing them all. Some that come to mind are basic food storage--having enough to eat without having to go to the grocery store; being used to low or high indoor temperatures; having more ways to get around than just via car (which might not be viable in an emergency); having built trusting relationships between oneself and one's neighbors, and so on. Yes, you want to do all of these things regardless of whether you're preparing for a short-term emergency or for the long emergency.

But even here, I can already see differences. One of my background assumptions about the Long Emergency is that we will be living in a very low, but not no, energy world. This is actually one that I think Kunstler gets wrong in some of his fiction, although it could just be for effect. The major problem with having electricity, for example, isn't really going to be the availability of coal to fire the plants, but rather the cost of extraction & processing, and so the increased cost of purchasing the energy on the consumer side. In other words, electicity will probably be available, I just won't be able to afford very much of it. There may also be issues with the dilapidation of the grid system (which hasn't been upgraded in lo these many decades), so energy availability might be subject to some hiccups, too, although again, there probably still will be electricity available. And there probably really will be progress made on renewable sources of energy--at least enough to power true emergency things like hospitals, but possibly even enough to provide at least sporadic power to the masses. So generally speaking, I think we will probably have power, in some limited capacity. That is, power enough to maybe run the stove (maybe once or twice a week, or more often), maybe even enough to run a space heater or two, that sort of thing (enough to keep my computer running?!?!).

Ah. Now we start to see the differences between short-term and long-term emergencies. You see, the stuff in the previous paragraph--that's all about the long emergency. But how am I planning to cook things during a short-term emergency where there is no power? Not just low-power, or "plan to do all your cooking on Tuesday" power, but no power. And probably with little to no warning. Yeah, that's a different ball of wax. Or what about eating when you've been evacuated? We had major flooding here this year, and while I don't think our house is in serious danger of evacuation, we are in serious danger of power outages and water contamination. We also, realistically, might need to take refugees from other parts of the city into our house in the coming years.

So already we see some different constraints between these two. It really doesn't make sense to store water for the Long Emergency--I doubt our house has enough space to hold all the water we'd need for a year. But we do need to store water for short-term emergencies, when the power is out for running the water supply system, or the water has become contaminated. We need ways to prepare meals without power--sterno cooking rigs, barbeque grills, etc. Or we need a good backlog of meals that can be prepared without power. We need ways to stay warm with no heat and no power--preferably, ways that are safe. We need all kinds of things like that. Hm. Maybe I should make a list?

Some of these things will slowly be covered by Long Emergency preparations. Sooner or later, if we're able to stay in our house, we'll have to find some non-electric, non-gas form of house heating, and that will take care of heat (and possibly cooking) during short-term emergencies. Sooner or later we're going to purchase a gravity water filter, which will go a long way towards water security for short-term emergencies; installing a water pump of our own would finish that project. The more complete our long emergency preparations are, the less we need to prepare for short term emergencies. Unfortunately, we're not exactly "nearly done" with our long emergency preparations. And in either case, having preparations for fast evacuations will become increasingly important as things generally fall apart.

And so I'm storing water for short-term emergencies, while working on plans for "water security" for the long emergency. My 10-gallon water bottles downstairs will get us through a 2-week emergency; or at least, they will once I've gotten enough of them, I currently only have two! And I'm looking into water cachement systems, cisterns, etc. for long term solutions. (Argh! My neighbor has a cistern on her property! It's so unfair.... Hm, maybe she'll share?). I'll probably be concentrating on our short-term emergency preparations for a bit, since that's what I'll be working on around here, until gardening season kicks in. My upcoming projects are things like: getting more water bottles; getting a water filtration system; constructing "bug out buckets"; putting together lists of no-energy meal prep foods; getting materials (e.g., sterno) for emergency cooking, etc. And boy will I be more than happy to take suggestions, advice, experiences, etc. Always remember, the hallmark of this blog: I have no idea what I'm doing!

My Current Approach

First, did you know that the flat-out worst time to start a new blog is right before a major holiday season? Yup, no kidding. My new blog is not only competing with my regular life, but with no school, and cookies, and presents, and family gatherings, and and and.... I hope to post somewhat regularly in the future, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's rather sporadic at first. Ah well, it'll give me time to come up with reasonable things to write about, eh?

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, I should say first that I am a devotee of Sharon Astyk and her blog, Casaubon's Book, and find almost everything she has to say of huge value. Much of my thinking on adapting in place (how to do it, why to do it, etc.) has been shaped by her writing, although I've not had the good grace to be able to take her actual class on adapting in place yet (but I sure hope to!). My financial thinking has been heavily shaped by Chris Martenson and the folks over at The Automatic Earth. I think I do have some original material to contribute to these discussions, but again, most of my emphasis will fall into the "how the *@#$&$ am I going to do all this?!" arena.

My overall approach to adaptation, these days anyway, falls into two broad categories: (1) preparing for short-term emergencies (e.g., 3-day to 2-week outages, evacuations, etc.); and (2) preparing for lifestyle-changes brought about by our Brave New World. The first one I'll call "short-term preparedness," and the second one I'll probably refer to as "the long emergency preparedness" after Monsieur Kunstler's work. I think that, technically, there probably is a third category that goes somewhere in between these two--the months to a-year-or-so long emergencies. Am I preparing for this sort of emergency? No. For one thing, if you're prepared for the long emergency, then you're pretty much by default prepared for any medium-range problems we'll have (short-term emergencies have a somewhat different set of constraints). But more than this, the middle-ground preparedness implicitly assumes that there will be a time when we come back out of this situation, and I think that's false. Preparing for the new world, to me, does not involve just managing to get through the next year, and then everything will return to normal. I think that normal is pretty much over. We're still clinging to it, no doubt. But I think it's a illusion to labor under the idea that this is only temporary. So when I store food, it's not just "to get us through this year" because the logical corrollary of this mindset is that I won't restock, or not much anyway. But preparing for the long emergency means that I am changing my family's whole lifestyle. Food storage and energy adaptation will be permanent changes in the way we do things, not just temporary inconveniences (well, at least the ones that work will be).

And in fact, this leads nicely to a discussion about why do these things now? Why not just enjoy the cheap energy while we've got it, and then deal with the fallout later? Certainly that's been the modus operandi for the past century, why stop now? I think there are lots of responses to this, some obvious and some less so. Many of the obvious responses revolve around the idea that it's probably a good idea to sort out how to live in a low-energy world before you're likely to die of starvation from it cause you never learned how to garden, or how to cook from scratch, or how to find local farmers, and so on. Right now we've got a sort of cushion period available--not a very big cushion, mind you, but we can float between the worlds, as it were. We can prepare for the future while still having the current "just in time" economy as backup. This is a huge luxury. Disaster will not currently strike us if I find that I've failed to store enough wheat berries for the upcoming year--I'll make a note of how much more we'll need, and then I'll go to the store for some flour. We can flip the power main in our house and see how it goes for three days of no power, to see how good our emergency preparations are. And then, bliss of bliss, we can turn it back on and fix what we did wrong. Heck, if we're really underprepared, we can even cut off the experiment early! Incredible! During a real emergency I can flip the power main all day long and all that will happen is my arm will get tired.

Another in the "obvious" category is the economic benefit of living this lifestyle right now. Of course, there is a fair amount of money outlay for some of the things I want to do, but in general, we will save money by changing our lifestyle now. Buying food in bulk is cheaper than buying it piecemeal from the store, and as a side benefit it's reassuring to know we have plenty to eat and cuts down on last-minute treks to the grocery store. Gardening helps cut our grocery store costs, improves our lives & health, and helps keep me sane. Buying from local farmers can be cheaper, and certainly fresher, than buying from grocery stores, and it has the side-benefit that it helps make our area more self-reliant and it builds our local economy by keeping our money & tax dollars in town. That helps maintain our job pool and infrastructure--good things indeed. And using less energy just costs less than otherwise--we're not sucking down as much oil, coal, & natural gas, so less of it shows up on our monthly bills or out of our monthly budget. The less electricity we use, the more we can afford to offset what we do use with wind & solar packages offered through our utility company. And the side benefits here are environmental--less emissions, helping to slow down global warming, which is really something we cannot afford to wait on, no matter how cheap energy might be right now.

But then there are the less obvious reasons for why I want to do these things now. I don't want this lifestyle to feel like torture and deprivation, since I'm pretty sure it's how we'll be living for the foreseeable future. If I'm in a head-space where I simply. cannot. survive. without. my. iPod I've got a serious problem, because my future may well be one without an iPod. And this is the prevailing attitude right now--the notion that we should ever have to live without cell phones, or satellite TV, iPods, cars, and the like, is intolerable to many in my society. When these people are finally forced, either via energy or the economy, to give up their toys, I'm betting they will suffer mightily. I don't want to suffer. I want this lifestyle to seem normal. I want the food that I serve now to be like the food I will serve in two years, since that will provide comfort and continuity, rather than just one more reminder about how our lives have changed.

Think about it this way: imagine a woman talking with her grandma. Like most people of her generation, the grandmother grew up with a root cellar and food storage, with fairly plain foods, very few luxuries, maybe not even indoor running water or electricity, and other similar lifestyle differences. Now imagine this person telling her grandmother, to her face, that her childhood is beyond-the-pale unbearable, and it is worth it to destroy the environment and the future of our children just so that she can avoid living like her grandma did when growing up. Was grandma's life really that depraved? There were many people during the depression who genuinely suffered, and I'm not advocating joy in suffering. But most people just lived differently, and far more lightly, than we do. They had a different set of values; they evaluated their lives on different terms. They expected different things out of their lives, and had different goals. Their mores and institutions aren't necessarily better or worse than our social mores and institutions--just different. But they're a set of mores and institutions far better suited for the coming world than the ones we currently have, and that is where the rubber meets the road.