Tuesday, March 28, 2023

The reason for the baby bust

 I listed 10 "large" things last night, and sure enough, today there are some more sales - for completely different things. But sales are sales. 

The food bombers came by last night again, just as it was starting to rain so I hustled the boxes into here and sorted the stuff. More sphaghetti and a lot of bags of macaroni and various noodles. Lots of beans and long grain brown rice. A couple of large bags of roast peanuts but salt-free. They're oily enough though that I might be able to put salt on them and have it stick. 

I need to get into the habit of bagging this stuff up and donating it, and I have just jars and jars and jars of this pasta that's like little short pieces of angel hair that I picked up maybe 4 years ago and ought to be cycled out. 

So I need to buy some "thank you" bags to put the stuff in because I can't get enough bags to deal with it all even if I ask for a bag at the grocery stores every time. 

I just tried to get plenty of sleep after that, and slept through the rain that poured down all day. 

A thought I've been developing is that the reason why my own family was one with 5 kids and families of 3-7 kids were pretty much the norm, was that a family would have one car, if that. Generally the dad drove the ca to work and back, it was used for a weekly big shopping trip, and for trips to the beach. On a day-to-day basis kids took the bus or walked or rode their bikes. So you had say, a family of 5 with one car. 

Now, it's one car per person, Dad drives his car to work then Mom needs an SUV because everyone else has an SUV and it's an arms race. Kids need cars as soon as they're 16 or whatever the minimum driving age is these days. You end up with one car per person. 

Cars are expensive to support. Much more so than supporting another person. The general rule is 2 people per room max., so even my little hole-in-the-wall apartment in Sunnyvale on Maude Avenue could have housed two people pretty comfortably. Same $800 a month rent, the only additional cost being for a bit more food, electricity maybe, things like clothes. I could have easily supported another person, but the one car I had took a huge part of my income and supporting another person *and* another car for that person would not have really worked. 

There's also the matter of sheer living space. I'm going to try to find some hard numbers but I'm fairly comfortable saying that each car takes up the "living space" of two people. The Santa Clara valley here had some of the most fertile soil in the country and now it's almost all under roads and parking structures. 

And you *must* have these things to participate in our society. Without a car you're a nobody. Without driving it around frantically day in and day out, to get and keep a job, to shop for groceries in a rush before you are ready to just about drop in your tracks for need of sleep at the end of your day, to the tire place for more tires, to the gas station for more gas, to the smog test and to the dealership for a newer car ... drive an old clunker and you risk losing that job that supports it all... 

So as cars come in, kids are going out. Hence the baby bust. People are making rational decisions. The car is essential to survival, the next generation is not. Those of us who think about it don't want to condemn another human being into the rush-rush-rush slavery of it all. 

I made sure the cooler I got yesterday was clean, then put my packages of spaghetti in it - 45 of them - and then took the jars and jars of "fideo" noodles and all the other stuff and bagged or boxed it up. It made two heavy loads of 100+ lbs each. I took each load out to a large parking lot by Old Bayshore so that people driving by, if they see the stuff and decide to investigate, have plenty of room to stop and park their car. The best place ended up being by the base of a big railroad signal pole, which most people will keep some distance from because most people know they're idiots and will pile their car right into it if they don't give it a wide berth. 

Coming in from the first trip, the people a few doors down had their large dog out roaming around so I went out with the 2nd load in the other direction. I deposited the stuff, and stopped on the way back to pick up two large pieces of firm foam that, once dried out, is really handy for packing. 

I heard a sound and turned and going right by was a zombie on a bike, with a 2nd, no doubt freshly stolen, bike. This is why I don't like being out and around after dark as it's zombie hours. The zombie rode on by, and I heard a sound in the direction it had come indicating possible zombie activity. So, it was zombies, who now knew I was there and were probably salivating over the thought of some nice fresh brains to eat, or the dog, which I've seen before and it not utterly out of control. 

I rode in past the dog, going wide around the front of the place and I had my long steel bolt in my hand ready to go, but they'd taken the dog in so I was able to get back into here without incident. Whew! 

It's probably the best policy to take the boxes of food as soon as I notice some have been left, go through them for anything I might want for myself, for Tom, or for the bum up at H Mart, and then just put the boxes by the railroad signal pole. The stuff is almost totally things that housed humans, not zombies, can use anyway. Canned stuff, things that need soaking and preparation like beans, or pasta that needs boiling. There was a good 25 lbs of pasta in this batch aside from the 100+ lbs of "fideo" pasta in jars. Just the kind of thing a Mexican grandma would love to cook up for her family. 

I suspect the "food bombing" happens here because the people who are working for the food bank get points somehow for leaving it *somewhere* and this is a convenient place. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Heavy, man.

 Last night I got the Connstellation cornet out and put the screw for the 1st valve trigger back on, and installed new water key corks too. ...