This year the dish soap fairy went into battle with adversity as a way of relieving her stress that she didn't actually exist. Adversity was so impressed by her ferocity in battle that it decided to give all geeks a break and only cause a minimal amount of trouble. The battle this year was fueled by 947,374 calories to be exact. This cost a grand total of $3,880 in groceries. $1,200 of that was donated by family members who were eager to help put food on my table. I feel really privileged to have been able to celebrate the high fat low carb diet without actually going on it.
In January I predicted that one person would only go through 828,000 calories in one year if they were eating 2,300 calories per day. I predicted that if a person stored up 1,209,664 calories in buckets then that would be enough for them and one slave. As it turns out I am my own slave and so I need to eat a lot more than 2,300 calories per day. I need more like 2,600 calories per day to be exact. It's a good thing I don't have a slave in addition to slaving away or they would be dead or on their way to dead. They'd only have enough energy to give me the finger before going back to their hard work with blinking, breathing, and dying. Two hard working slaves would need to eat somewhere around 1,894,748 calories.
Here is a prototype list I came up with in January 2017 for a year of stored food:
26 bags of organic oats (1 kg each $5 each 3750 cal each) ($130 all 97500 cal all)
17 jars apple sauce (650 ml each $3 each 300 cal each) ( $51 all 5100 cal all )
8 containers hemp seeds (454 grams each $15 each 2775 cal each) ($120 all 22,200 cal all)
2 bags ground cinnamon (400 grams each $3.70 each 988 cal each) ($7.40 all 1976 cal all)
3 bags flax seed (500 grams each $6.00 each 2666 cal each) ($18 all 7998 cal all)
8 bags of chia seeds (454 grams each $15.50 each 2088 cal each) ($124 all 16,704 cal all)
4 bags raisins (1 kg each $6.00 each 3000 cal each) ($24 all 12,000 cal all)
5 bags jasmine rice (8 kg each $19 each 28,688 cal) ($95 all 143,440 all)
36 bags green lentils (1 kg each $3.50 3500 cal each) ($126 all 126,000 all)
17 jars Nanak Desi Ghee (800 grams each $13.80 each 7008 cal each) ($234 all 119,136 cal all)
49 containers organic sugar (900 grams each $5.50 each 3375 cal each) ($269.50 all 165,375 cal all)
3 containers pure vanilla extract (100 ml each $10 each 243 cal each) ($30 all 729 cal all)
6 bags organic white flour (2kg each $10.50 each 7000 cal each) ( $16.50 all 42,000 cal all)
1 container baking soda (500 grams $1.32 each 0 cal each) ($1.32 all 0 cal all)
1 container sea salt (750 grams $5 each 0 cal each) ($5 all 0 cal)
12 bags Chipits (1.8 kg each $18 each 8400 cal each) ($216 all 100,800 cal all)
2 bags Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer (453 grams each $15 each 1920 cal each) ($30 all 3840 cal all)
NO ALGAE!
12 jars peanut butter (1 kg each $8.00 each 6250 cal each) ($96 all 75,000 cal all)
20 bags whole green peas (1800 grams each $4.50 each 5,580 cal each) ($90 all 111,600 cal all)
55 bags rice cakes (241 grams each $5.50 each 910 cal each) ($302.50 all 50,050 cal all)
57 jars pesto sauce (190 grams each $4.60 each 728 cal each) ($262.20 all 41,496 cal all)
36 boxes of tea (20 tea bags each $7.80 each 20 cal each) ($280.80 all 720 cal all)
15 containers honey (1 kg each $12 each 3000 cal each) ($180 all 45,000 cal all)
6 containers miso (400 grams each $8.00 each 1000 cal each) ($48 all 6000 cal all)
10 bottles Bragg seasoning (180 ml each $6.49 each 0 cal each) ($64.90 all)
5 bottles olive oil (375 ml each $12 each 3000 cal each) ($60 all 15,000 cal all)
Total cost: $2882.12
cost/10,000 calories: $23.80
Monthly cost: $240
Total calories: 1,209,664
Calories available per day: 3360
Calories needed to cover yearly deviation: 144,000
Expected caloric deviation per day: 400
Excess calories available for slave per year: 237,664
Excess calories available for slave per day: 660
The cost of the 1,209,664 stored calories was calculated to cost $2,882. If I forced myself to store up 947,374 calories in storage buckets for a whole year it would cost $2,257. That would save me around $1,623 over the course of a year but the question is what kind of crazy would I be at the end of the year? Would I be raving mad? Desperate to catch squirrels? Digging in garbages? Raiding berry patches? Chasing bears to find out if they taste like apples?
The storage shopping list that I created in January 2017 was a prototype and I am currently running a comparison between that list and my actual list of purchases. I have to laugh looking back at the idea that I was somehow going to go through forty four kilograms of sugar. In actuality I went through only eighteen kilograms. In retrospect the flour to sugar ratio was way off and there should have been four times the flour going into storage. The only problem is that flour doesn't store very well. I'd much rather store wheat berries although I've never actually tried that before. If I had gone with that list as my storage list I would have a lot of sugar, oats, rice, lentils, chipits, and honey left over. Having food left over isn't necessarily a bad thing however I'd like to make the list work without any glitches.
Amended Yearly Storage List
(Based on an actual year of eating!!!)
11 kg organic oats ($44 provides 41,250 cal)
17 jars apple sauce ($51 provides 5,100 cal)
3.6 kg organic hemp hearts (wholesale $91 provides 22,200 cal)
11 kg organic chia seeds (wholesale $92 provides 51,040 cal)
4 kg raisins ($24 provides 12,000 cal)
30 kg rice ($76 provides 114,752 cal)
15 kg organic lentils (wholesale $60 provides 52,500 cal)
15 kg organic chickpeas (wholesale $80 provides 54,600 cal)
25 kg organic sugar (wholesale $63 provides 93,750 cal)
3 containers pure vanilla ($30 provides 729 cal)
40 kg organic flour ($112 provides 140,000 cal)
1 container baking soda ($1.20 provides 0 cal)
1.5 kg salt ($10 provides 0 cal)
9 kg organic chocolate chips (wholesale $144 provides 43,200)
6 kg organic peanut butter (wholesale $57 provides 37,500 cal)
6 kg roasted organic peanuts (wholesale $60 provides 34,020 cal)
3 kg organic sunflower seeds (wholesale $19 provides 17,520 cal)
10 jars pesto sauce ($46 provides 7,280 cal)
10 kg organic honey (wholesale $130 provides 30,000 cal)
3 containers miso ($21 provides 3000 cal)
1.8 L Bragg seasoning ($14 provides 0 cal)
4.5 L organic olive oil (wholesale $58 provides 36,990 cal)
4.3 L organic coconut oil (wholesale $57 provides 34,142 cal)
1 kg Surf Sweets gummy bears (website $25 provides 3,120 cal)
(They are dangerous to have in large quantities around adults. Some precautions may be necessary.)
1 kg dried organic cranberries (wholesale $17 provides 3080 cal)
12 cans organic diced tomatoes ($51.60 provides 1440 cal)
5 kg organic coffee (wholesale $125 provides 0 cal)
50 packages Annie's Mac n Cheese( $200 provides 33,000 cal)
8 kg organic pasta (wholesale $109 provides 10,480 cal)
Calories provided: 882,693
Calories needed in one year: 947,374
days of starvation: 24
Cost: $1867.9
After having a look at some wholesale prices I noticed that I could save around $438 if I bought wholesale sugar, chia seeds, hemp seeds, chocolate chips, peanut butter, olive oil and coconut oil. In some cases the savings are fifty percent. Buying 14 kg of organic ghee is rather ridiculous with a bill of $558 on a good day. It's much better to buy organic butter in the store and only spend $224 on 14 kg of butter. What I have shown is that if all conditions were favorable a person could eat organic for $155 per month. The problem behind it all is that it's not a perfect world. If this goes on a line of credit the bank will start charging around $100 every month. In four months you would have lost the savings if you can't pay it off. That is where all the planning in the world starts to fall on its face.
As a side gig to counting calories and creating reliable diets I have been dabbling with a sort of hybrid homelessness. It's the result of flying in the face of everyone else's schedule. It's somewhat complicated at times to be chasing sleep in the day time while everyone else is at their highest potential for activity. It's especially complicated when struggling with periods of light sleep. What would a parent do with a child when someone is complaining their daytime sleep is light? Children especially are at their highest potential for activity from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to sleep. To ask a child to be still for eight hours at the peak of the day's energy is a nearly impossible task that would monopolize a parent's attention. It's a mighty weight to accept the offers that everyone in the entire residence is going to put their lives on hold for the afternoon. What am I going to say? Sure I will gladly take your family hostage and nobody will be allowed to move or speak while I am sleeping. The silence has an underlying pressure of being held in this unnatural way and it is unfair for one person to stand in the way of seven others.
I slept the best when nobody was second guessing their behavior. Ear plugs would block out the majority of noises including smoke detectors going off which didn't exactly make for a safe situation. Somehow through it all there was a little tiny hole wearing away in my patience as at times it wasn't just like trying to sleep under a race track it was like trying to sleep under a circus. Things were holding steady until the littlest one decided she was going to take her stomping to a professional level. She started a new game where she would stomp as hard as she could in one spot, directly above me, and then see how long she could maintain her effort. The nice thing was sometimes she would alternate with tapping a stick on the floor at a volume that was just barely perceptible and also at a steady interval as if she was soothing her victims with a more gentle auditory torture. When you are trying not to flip out and lose your mind completely one minute seems like an eternity. The light, insidious noise of a stick tapping was actually more excruciating than the stomping game as it was almost impossible not to get the impression that she was instigating a plan to end the sanity of every adult within hearing distance.
It was truly humbling to be so totally broken by such a small noise in such a short period of time by the dedicated efforts of this young lady. I felt really lucky to have someone so close by who was so completely dedicated and willing to do whatever it took to help me lose my mind and my sanity together at the same time. She was so creative that she didn't need anything dramatic like heavy metal music to wear away a person's grip on their sanity. She could use the tiniest thing to achieve an even greater result than eight hours of torture. She was so good she could make the FBI and the CIA look like a bunch of incompetent goofs. After a while I wondered if Chinese water torture would be slightly easier to handle. Eventually my patience snapped completely and I went into fight or flight. I had to leave the house for a couple months to heal my patience back into shape. It was either leave or get angry at a time when I had no resilience to fall back on. All indicators were that everyone else had run out of resilience as well. The whole house was in danger of being broken into little tiny pieces.
While some people are able to deal with fight or flight and neutralize it I decided to take the path of least resistance and I fled like a bastard all the while making like I was just on my way out to tea possibly with the Queen of England. Back into that delightful van I went to explore what it meant to hibernate. I found the minute I stopped the engine and tucked myself into the back seat with a hat pulled down over my eyes I became more than just still. I began to relax knowing that chances were there was going to be peace and quiet for as long as I wanted it. There was going to be peace and quiet until a whole group of good Samaritans came over to pound on the windows and ask if I was okay. They must have had someone park on the road in the past and commit suicide. I can't think of any other explanation for their distress. Anyone parking near their house makes them really nervous to the point they feel like they have to check things out to reassure themselves everything is okay. If I had known I would have gone out equipped with a big neon sign "Don't worry I'm not here to kill myself. I work at night but I'm not actually a prostitute and I'd prefer you didn't knock on the window while I am trying to sleep. I'm not here to bait or molest your children or rob your home. I'm not going to shit on your lawn. Please don't set off any explosives. I will be gone by twenty two hundred hours. Thank you." If I was really ambitious I'd go straight for the billboard size with flashing neon lights. I'm sure that would help me to blend in with the background. For the illiterate it might have helped to also have a spoken message blaring on a loud speaker in multiple languages.
I would find myself relaxing into that peace and quiet but the peace and quiet was unpredictable to say the least. Whatever happened on the way to falling asleep I was happy to accept the consequences of my chosen accommodations. There would be peace and quiet until some big tough guy decided to go drifting to impress their date or put on Slayer for make out music. There would be peace until the fear set in that my alarm failed and I was now locked in the park. Occasionally the park warden decided to take a special initiative and go around honking his horn to give everyone a head's up on closing time. There would be perfect peace until one of the birds flying by decided they were going to go insane and release a life time of pent up stress by pecking my van to death. I considered myself lucky to survive that bird's rage. I'm pretty sure I might have died if it got through the metal. It looked at me from every window, and then pounded on the roof with its beak as if it was only a matter of time until it got to me. That was a big bird. If it was any bigger it would alternate terrorizing shift workers with eating bears and cougars.
The night I felt safest tucked into a perfect little gravel turnaround is the night the explosion went off. There was a loud BANG louder than a gun and there was a white light even whiter than a welding arc coming from so close it could have been right next to the front wheel. I lay there motionless and confused and then dared to look but nobody was there. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a bird. Quickly I made my way to the front seat and took off, relieved that everything was working and the sound hadn't been some component in the vehicle randomly destroying itself. It would have really sucked if the explosion had rendered my vehicle inoperable. When you depend on your vehicle for sleeping quarters as well as transportation it seems twice as horrible to imagine a breakdown. Safe to say it was a very long time until I parked there again.
After the park was closed my favorite spots to park were next to houses with massive hedges or next to bridges so I could get a better idea of what rotting fish smelled like. The very very best place to park was anywhere on the road next to a metal side rail. That meant it was safe to park there because the only thing on the other side of it was an overgrown patch of forest. Lots of people probably think that way which is why quite often I would see other camper vans parked there too. I'm glad the neighbors there didn't practice the use of explosives just fog horns and rotten eggs.
I tried to change up my parking space daily but I couldn't help but favor certain places and eventually people started to notice. They would bring their children to come and stare in the windows. They would bring their friends and relatives and they would all stare in the windows talking to each other as if there was something they were supposed to do but they couldn't quite figure it out. I guess they didn't get the memo on how to scare away shift workers with explosives. I learned not to park at grocery stores as people who go to grocery stores are in a consumer state of mind. They would see a woman waking up from a good sleep and they would want to know how much it costs to come in and have a nice nap with her. It's a good thing I didn't run over that man leaving the parking lot that day but in a way I wish I had. He was two hormones away from jumping on the front hood and showing the world how dogs do it. If that isn't enough to scare someone shitless nothing is.
Aside from narrowly escaping getting blown to pieces and pecked to shreds this year has been relatively charmed. My teeth set such a good example of being omnipotent that my cat decided he was also going to be omnipotent and my van tried to become invincible as well. My cat was free of injury and by some miracle he did not require the attention of a veterinarian. The bill for van repairs and maintenance came in under three hundred dollars which was a rare treat. Health wise I experienced a good year only littered with the usual flu bugs.
The flu bugs are still working on becoming powerful as gods and moving on to create a new world called Planet Influenza in some other galaxy. If we could just teach the flu bugs to use a phone in the mean time they could call us up and give us notice that they are coming to hang out. The phone would probably never stop ringing and eventually we'd have to start blocking their calls just to get some peace. The police station would be worn out from tracing threatening phone calls. There seems to be a ridiculous number of days in a year that the flu bugs are trying to hang out and get intimate. We want to say to them "just go home! You're making us sick!" but we can't because the flu bugs live everywhere.
Every hour is visiting hours for a flu bug and it really makes me sick to think how many days I spent nauseated. Most days I considered myself lucky that the bug was noticeable but not powerful enough to take me all the way down to the ground. The days I was inches from the ground were the days I was thankful for being on the night shift. If I was on the day shift I knew I would be calling in sick. It's hard to forget the two weeks ruled by the Super Duper Pooper Bug. Oddly enough most of the flus in the early part of the year were missing the most common symptom, diarrhea. It's like the flu bug was really enjoying fucking with us, and it was saving the best for last. It was busy reinventing itself into a giant shit machine and it succeeded. That Super Duper Pooper Bug was going to take your poop away whether you liked it or not. Under the influence of this bug you would not be allowed to keep any poop for yourself. Not even one little turd. Never were the toilets at work so well used and the diaper section so completely kicked. A fool and their poop are easily parted so they say. Given the option I'd probably take the Super Duper Pooper Bug over the one that left me feeling like I'd been kicked in the head for a year straight. If there's one thing I can't stand it's headaches that feel like a part of your brain is being replaced by a blade and the pain radiates until it feels like every muscles in your neck is part of a conspiracy to torture you. I don't like the flus that have you on the ground so fast that you wonder if it might be easier to get up after getting mauled by a lion.
On the bright side there was no need to miss work to nurse any injuries as there were no sprains and nothing tore or broke except my brain. If my brain is broken then I will keep it that way as I rather enjoy laughing myself to tears and laying incapacitated on the floor by the idea of U2 singing "Where the Jews have no name." My overall endurance seemed to be prone to an overall increase. What seemed like my body becoming exhausted was really my body getting stronger. Climbing up and down off a step ladder all night two days a week and doing squats constantly on another day meant intense pain and fatigue at first but then that gave way to greater strength. The strength came in handy for climbing a couple mountains and covering for numerous employee vacations over the year. In a way it was like as soon as I became accustomed to one extra demand there was another demand added and the net result was that I would go home with enough energy to make diner and blink. At times the blinking was rather vigorous followed by a feat of strength known as a walk.
I credit much of my freedom from injury to taking curcumin. When I know I'm up against something ridiculously demanding on my body I make sure I take at least 1800 mg of curcumin daily. It helps to keep inflammation from becoming a problem and so muscles and tendons are more likely to recover quickly if blood flow is not restricted by an inflammation zone. A wise man once pointed out if you take curcumin with pepper you absorb it even better. The pills with pepper are quite expensive but if you go for the cheap curcumin you can always eat something with pepper on it after you take the pills.
There were no moves required this year which is a first in four years. I might have been smart to move but there is really nowhere to move to that isn't ridiculously expensive. It's highly doubtful given my past average that I would be able to stay wherever I ended up. Even if I lived in a convent most likely the nuns would be smoking just about everything they could get their hands on and entertaining circus animals as a side show. The moral of the story always seems to be, wherever I go I will end up living in my van so I may as well be happy spending a few hours at home before the ceiling starts to shake and then continue on my way dabbling with the art of hybrid homelessness. Eventually one day I will get brave and try to tame the ceiling with a variety of panels to see if that helps. Sound proofing one room wouldn't be too expensive. I could have a good talk with the dish soap fairy about it but I think she is leaning more towards experimentation with white noise and earplugs.
There is a lot of adversity potential in the struggle to attain sleep in the day time and that might be a good way to become immune from attracting any more adversity. In the best case scenario seeking out a good sleep means crashing out for almost twenty hours straight on a weekend or worse case scenario all the effort in the world turns up nothing at all. Showing up at work with no sleep is like an automatic awesome in the world of adversity. There's enough struggle waiting each day so there is definitely no shortage of struggle which means there probably won't be more struggle struggling to get into the picture if you know what I mean. Even if there was some struggle struggling to get into the struggle there is just no room for struggle amidst the current struggle so the struggle that was struggling to get into the struggle would be having the struggle of a lifetime! Everything is all struggled out. Do you know where your struggle is? Do I sound like someone who is short a few naps? Here we go! Getting closer to a brand new year!
Christmas is a carefully designed killing machine that targets people's self esteem. It's the most wonderful time of the Fuhrer. If you thought for a second that you could be a good person without emptying out your wallet well you were wrong. This is ten times worse than a change rapist who sticks out their hand and effectively communicates that if you don't give them all the change in your purse then you're a piece of shit. Your worth is now directly proportional to the material objects you can generate, buy, bake or wrap. If someone gives you a present and you let yourself think for a second that they love you so much they don't expect anything back well your asshole is now afflicted with that terrible growth problem.
If you want to make it into the New Year without losing the ability to put on your pants you will have to think of something. If anyone curses me and gives me a present I know exactly what I am going to do. I have a strategy and I'm thinking it might work. This is the plan. Make homemade edible ice cream bowls and dip them in chocolate. Make homemade chocolate pudding and homemade vanilla pudding and swirl them together in the cups. Decorate with chocolate fans, duo chocolate sticks and candies and then place on a covered serving tray. Done deal. Everyone can now at least pretend that my pants fit and I'm still a good person.
If you are under the false impression that Christmas is a joyous time of year just go to a retail store and stand in the lineup for a minute. The person behind you will inch forward with rage in their eyes, acting like every second you keep them from spending all their money is another second they can't stand. They are so berserk by the time they get to the cashier they will be foaming at the mouth and before the cashier even opens the till they will be throwing handfuls of money and screaming "Here take it all!" and then run screaming from the store. I feel really bad for cashiers who have to work this time of year. It's a good thing that a lot of stores have the fore thought to organize traffic directors. If it were legal they would be able to carry a taser.
This time of year we would all do well to pray for sanity. I think it's a great strategy to be ridiculously patient and kind. Be Jesus. That's a good start to defeating the damage this consumer driven holiday is likely to cause. If you want to be even kinder just don't give anything, thus sparing your fellow man from having to walk around with an asshole the size of a space station. I think a good strategy is to have a big party in November like Noodlicus that way everyone gets all the merriment they need without the celebration feeling forced or obligatory. Everyone just gets all their guilt out early and hundreds of dollars later the immunity holds but only if everyone believes in the power of Noodlicus.
