I'm on duty with Morgan tonight & with only about two hours to go, don't dare lie down. Once I'm asleep, I'm ASLEEP & don't talk to me if you have to wake me up. I'm tired, it was a long day, but not so tired that I'm not looking forward to a change in routine tonight. If Morgan can do it, so can I. The man is twice my age & he said he thinks it's going to be a "fun" night. Maybe I should have told him I'm a bit scared of the dark - seriously, I am. I never outgrew that from childhood. Oh I can go out in the dark, but my heart just pounds. And oh man, I HATE going out there alone.

We sure are getting the work down to a routine now which is good. It's taking us less time, which means that when we start planting, we'll have more time to do that. I wish we had a 'planting fairy' or something to help us with the work we have coming our way. But that's not going to happen, no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut & wish. Listen to me, I sound like one of the kids.

They're actually looking forward to planting. Well, they're lower to the ground & far more flexible than we are. They won't have stiff backs from bending over & sticking seeds in the ground for hours on end. I probably will & there's got to be a way to do it without bending too much. To hell with it, I'll just scoot along the ground on my butt, maybe wear a plastic bag over my jeans. I can see us now, all hunched over in the sun, (gotta remember to wear sunscreen or I'll end up with 'lobster nose) & scrabbling around the dirt like seagulls in a landfill. Maybe once things get boring - maybe ten minutes? - we could have planting races. Um, maybe that's not a good idea. I can see some of the kids cheating, not planting their seeds or spacing them too far apart. I suggested to Drew that he cut some sticks about eighteen inches long; that's the spacing for corn. Place your stick down, plant your seed & cover it, move the stick up & keep going... forever!

We'll plant a fair bit of corn. It can be canned, frozen, dried, ground - not fond of cornmeal but it's handy as a filler & I LOVE an end of summer corn roast. Drew said he's got several varieties of corn, maturing at different times, so we won't be stuck doing corn for a month of Sundays. He has several varieties of most seeds. What he didn't have he 'obtained' at the supply store. He's worried that the usual practice of planting only one or two varieties could be a real problem if we get pests or rotten weather or something. This way he thinks, we should get something of every kind of plant we try & grow.

I'm just happy we don't have to be planting flax, cotton & raising sheep to make our own cloth. Now THAT is a little too primitive for me. I was looking at a book Noreen had, one that showed how looms were put together, threaded & operated. Lord love a duck, it looks COMPLICATED! I'll stick with designing, pattern making & sewing thank you very much. That can get complicated enough.

I wish we had a bit more variety with our livestock. We're okay with the cattle & chickens but a few sheep would be nice & a couple of pigs. I love roast pork & ham would be outstanding. Maybe some time during the summer we can trade some cattle for these animals. Jean said she knows enough of the basics to care for them; heck even a goat wouldn't be bad & what we don't know, we'll sure be motivated to learn quickly. Drew said he has no intentions of keeping all the cattle. Growing enough food for them is just not possible, even if we cut all the hay we can. How we're going to do that is a mystery. We have no cutter that's operable by hand & we may have to "raid" a museum or something like that to get scythes. Boy, what I wouldn't do for a half decent blacksmith right now. Betcha one could earn his way & still have more work than they could handle. There has to be something we could adapt to the job - I'm just not familiar enough with machinery to come up with something. I'll pass that on to the guys.

I sure miss my two dogs. Oh we had too many, but to lose them that way hurts like hell. It seems so senseless & I have no idea what set them off. Dad always warned me that they're more than half-wild at times & I sure learned that the hard way. Thank God for Jean. She was a lot more objective than I was & knew they wouldn't make it. She made sure that what had to be done was done. I stayed with them, I had to; they're my responsibility. I'm being more careful now, now taking their behavior for granted.

I'm not exactly what I'd call at loose ends right now, but there's not that much work with the dogs, the other stock don't need help or care from me & the women, (Cindy & Louise), have the house under control. I've been sneaking some time to work on some baby clothes & the quilts for the new babies. I LOVE Morgan's cradles. Cindy & Louise will bawl their eyes out when they see them, I know they will. He's put so much time into them & I'm not sure when or how he's managed that without being 'caught'. I hope he plans to do a bit on them tonight. He's almost got them completed now, has to finish a bit of carving, varnish them after assembling them, then we can put together the bedding.

The basic quilt hasn't been hard. I have the batting & a lovely cream colored basic material to work with. I've already designed some squares for each quilt & am cutting & stitching like mad. Maybe Annette can sketch them for the journal after I've finished them. They're a lot of work, but so are babies & these will certainly have lots of eager aunts & uncles. That's good because we all need to see some real live new humans around here & it will do the kids a world of good to see what's involved with babies. It will do our teens good, not that our three would be that stupid but ya never know. It's spring & hormones are hormones, especially at that age. I bet those will be spoiled babies! They'll be chasing chickens before we know it.

I spent some time while I was sewing catching up on the news. Locally, there's not a whole lot terribly new. A new group showed up, a real convoy of people - about 30 of them according to the radio. If you can believe it, they had BUSSES & enough fuel to get here. I'm not sure how they managed to find the gas - they haven't said much, but it looks as though they've been planning this for a while. There were 5 busses & they were smart enough to split their gear among all four. They started with 6, but lost 2 in the trip. It took them 6 days to get here from Chicago & they tell us not to expect anyone else - as far as they know, from that area. The group consists of three families & strays who decided to come along.

They were smart about this; planned carefully over the winter. They had the vehicles hidden in a garage somewhere & I think a lot of gas siphoning went on over the months they were waiting. They brought tons of canned food, well not tons but you know what I mean; seeds, tools & loads of 'how to' books. They're resting in town for a day or two, then will settle on a farm, not sure where. The best news is... one of them is a vet! Jean was delighted; I thought she'd run into town right there & then. The rest are a mixed lot but only four children are among them. The adults have worked as a pilot, el train driver, airline attendant, what else, let me see... stock broker, stockyard workers - two of those, a couple of housewives, a writer, (Stephen King type stuff I think they said) 7 TWO metal workers, a tool & die type - whatever it is they do exactly & a welder.

Chicago is toast to put it bluntly. What's left of the city, what hasn't burned or been looted looks like a war zone. The one man speaking for the group had a tough time talking about it. Being a city, there's little room to bury the dead & the stench is becoming grim. Rats & other vermin are everywhere & it's been described as a hellhole. Fires continue to burn & some are spreading. There are people alive there, but not many they've seen & most they did encounter also had plans to leave or were in the process of getting out. Most are heading farther south. They don't want to do an Illinois winter again. This group figures most won’t make it. They're going anyway they can, by bike, on foot, a few have horses, but they may not have time to get too far before winter. One group spoke of flying out - they have access to a plane, figure they can get it fueled for at least one trip out & have a man who claims he can fly it. Where they're going to land is anyone’s guess.

Nope, me I'm happy to be right where I am. Folks here are great & I'm comfortable with them. We work well together & other then rare & minor squabbles, we get along well. The neighbors seem okay, some better than okay & I'm already being teased, Jean too, about the three single guys at the Harrisons. Yeah, like I've got time for "courting" as MT puts it! Hey if some guy wants to flirt while helping me plant corn or cut hay cool, but he'd better not get in the way of anything sharp I'm carrying. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

More local news... individuals are increasingly coming together to form groups & those groups are getting busy now as the weather warms. The message is constantly repeated now - you have to look after yourself & the best way to do that right now is to start preparing a large garden. Some farmers are accepting people as laborers, boarders; all kinds of different arrangements are being made between people. Other farmers are providing seed, bringing it to City Hall where it can be distributed.

There's an unconfirmed report of several cases of smallpox in town, on the west side, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. We're not too worried about that here, not for ourselves or the other groups who've all had exposures & come through fine. What's worrying now is a minor outbreak of what seems to be flu in the area. Several people have come down with it & the doctor says he can't be sure, but it's nastier than a cold by a good margin. What's scary about that of course is that flu can & often dos initially look like early smallpox signs. For a few days, until a person DOESN'T break with pox, no one can be sure. The doctor must be going crazy with no labs available to him.

He's worried now about accidents on the farms & is asking people to be extra careful if they have young children. It doesn't take much; a shovel accidentally hits a foot & causes a cut that infects. Now you have a sick person & maybe no antibiotics. The clinic doesn't have much in the way of medications right now, especially antibiotics & I'm sure glad Anne went there for a few days. She'd copied lots of information about what plants & herbs, what old treatments seem based on solid science & hopes the clinic can use the information. I'm sure they can.

With some more people having arrived, we of course are getting news from other regions. Much of it sounds too unreal to be true, but who can tell? I remember hearing, early on in the crisis that many nuclear power plants had been shut down for safety. A couple of the members of the group who arrived by bus swear they heard that a couple of reactors had melted down along the east coast somewhere. I hope that's just a wild rumor - we have no way of knowing.

While there has been some travel, most of it is people trying to migrate to different areas - most heading south. Some people from Canada have been headed south, how far they can get is another question. A single person or a small group of young & strong people travelling light can probably get a good distance, but it will soon be time to stop & get growing. Overseas remains a big question mark. The last we reliably heard, every country had been hit & hit hard. But without reliable communications, we may not know more than that for a long time. I know our navy had ships at sea as well as submarines. They're probably in a better position to know what's happening than we are. They've probably sailed close enough to other nations' shores. What worries me is what happens when they run out of food - how so they get more? Were sailors vaccinated or did some ships succumb to the disease? I wonder if we'll ever know?

We've gone from being able to get almost instant information about any part of the world we care to to not knowing what's happening 20 miles away. That feels so strange & somehow I find that threatening. I find myself worrying about someone wanting to take revenge on us for the bomb we dropped but who would do that? It would be pointless anyway, wouldn't it? We're hurting badly enough as it is & I guess everyone else left alive has the same concerns we do - staying alive.

Mark & Annette rode over to the Greenes' place today to check on their son. He's doing great. Annette says he hurts, but his arm looks good. It's not blue or cold or any of the things Anne said we should be checking for, so that's good. They have a nice place over there & everyone is old enough to work. Mark says they're shoveling & hoeing like mad, clearing up some land close to the house to plant. They were really happy to get the milk & we also sent them a dozen or so eggs. The Harrisons are going to give them a couple of laying hens too. We're hoping as our eggs start hatching, we get a few roosters. The Harrisons don't have one & we're down to only one of them.

We finally used up the last of the frozen meat & just in time. The last of our ice has pretty much melted & Cindy said she was getting nervous about what was left. We have some frozen vegetables that are on the verge of going bad & Mark is going to bring some to the Harrisons & Greenes tomorrow. What they can't use, the Harrisons can feed to the pigs. Sam, Joe & Andy took the kids fishing today & brought home a mess of catfish. Boy, after months of meat, did fish ever taste GOOD! I'm not sure what we're going to do for meat for the next bit. We have a fair bit of canned meat, but that won't last forever. I think Drew plans to slaughter one of the cows this week - one of the older ones who didn't calve this year. I wish it were later in the summer. It might be risky in terms of health, but we could shoot rabbits or something. This early though, they have babies & shooting adults might mean losing more of the young ones than we could afford later. I don't know what the men have in mind.

Well it's getting on to guard duty time. I'd better get the coffee on for later. We're going to need lots tonight!