All I want is a little house in the suburbs.

And let me say, right off the bat, that I am very impressionable.

If I read something about alien abductions, I will spend the next few weeks scanning the skies for weird lights.

If I read about the marvelous powers of the mind, I will spend weeks practicing how to use the Force.

And it is fun, for the most part. Though sometimes my husband gets a little impatient with my topic du jour and will tactfully inform me that any amount of interest he might have harbored in his soul when I began my quest to understand whatever it is I am raving about this time, it has been sated many times over. Very tactfully.

He has begun grumbling lately about the amount of interest I am investing in the survivalist movement.

You know, survivalists, the local gun nuts who are convinced the end of the world is around the corner and prepare for it by turning their homes into food wharehouses and bunkers.

Except lately the label has grown mainstream, attracting both loonies expecting the triumphant return of Quetzacoatl in 2012 and normal families trying to survive on a tight budget. Some of their preps seem beyond, WAY beyond ridiculous. And some seem so commonsense that I fail to understand how I never thought of it.

I am storing water. And I am buying more groceries than I used to, seeking to stockpile a bit. Not a year. Not even three months. Two weeks is OK, and I keep from scaring Carlos too much.

I don't have the bug-out-bags, but I am planning on preparing three. ( We don't have children; Koji, the cat, is going with us.)

We live in a first floor apartment that is not defensible at all and has no soil for gardening. I tried to make a container garden, but the space is simply too small. I am trying to push Carlos into buying us a house with space for a garden. Since we live in the tropics we don't even have to work too hard at it. Most of the time you just have to place the seed where you want it to grow and Mother Nature will take care of itself. Your main concern might be preventing the house from dissapearing in a tangle of fruit trees.

Carlos is worried. The government of Puerto Rico will try to fight the reccession by kicking out a whole lot of employees. No one has been named yet, but the air is tense.

So, no house for now. Just a little first floor apartment and a small cache of false safety in uncertain times.