I know where I'll be on December 21, 2012

Some of my mom’s favorite past times include bossing me around and tricking me in to doing ‘things’ by leaving out key information about said ‘things’. More often than not this revolves around making me do various projects at my grandmother’s house. She’ll invite me to eat dinner there and once I arrive inform me that before we can eat I’ll need to rake the yard, take the trash out, organize a drawer and clip my grandmother’s toe nails. If my grandmother is the one who cooked, then I’ll usually comply. If mom made dinner, then I may put up a fight. But, I digress.

One of the projects I was gently encouraged to complete was cleaning out and organizing my grandmother’s pantry. I don’t know if you’ve ever cleaned out the pantry of someone raised during the Depression but it’s a life changing experience. Here’s a short list of some of the more interesting items I discovered (and I mean discovered in the most literal sense of the word) in the pantry:

• 6 new containers of Wisk laundry detergent – 32 loads each
• 8 cans of ‘wild pink salmon’
• 23 packets of lime jello
• 4,000 empty plastic grocery bags
• 14 boxes of cornbread muffin mix
• 7 tins of clams

In case you were wondering, not only is this an enormous stockpile for one little old lady but never in my 29 years on this Earth have I ever been served lime jello, pink salmon, cornbread muffins or clams by my grandmother.

When the world ends on December 21, 2012 you know where to find me. Curled up in freshly clean clothes, eating packaged fish in my grandmother’s pantry.