Have you ever had one of those weeks? You know, the kind that seems to bring an avalanche of unfortunate events all at once? Ugh. Me too.

The other day we set out on a mission to buy a few more oil lamps because a) I just love them and b) they sure come in handy in emergencies so I want as many as I can find, preferably antique ones.

We have a few antique stores we love to visit that are in close proximity to the house and sometimes we’ll even travel an hour or so in any given direction to peruse a few others in adjacent towns.

That’s one thing Idaho has plenty of besides potatoes and refugees from California – old things for sale!

The place we have the most luck at has been in business since we moved here and probably long before that. It’s where I bought my antique carousel horse…

It’s a huuuge building that just goes on and on and on and it’s filled to the brim with every vintage thing you can imagine! Including oil lamps.

Well it was. It was filled with everything you can imagine (including oil lamps).

When we drove by it was completely empty with no indication that they had moved to a new location. It was just… gone! Practically overnight!

We had just been in there a couple weeks earlier and chatted with the owner and she gave no indication she was leaving and I couldn’t find anything in our local news or online to explain why, so I can only wonder. 😥

That was just one unfortunate event.

A few days later, we are in bed and the doorbell rings. It was after 9pm and we don’t usually get company or missionaries or salesmen that late so it was a bit startling. The hubs was already asleep so I got up to answer it and rather than go to the door, I opened the bay window above the door to see who it was, just in case.

It was my neighbor. The one with the huskies which I blogged about a few weeks ago when one of them came to visit us in the back field. Then I blogged about how the other one came to visit not long after…

Yeah. That sweetheart.

Apparently she had gotten out again and this time she killed another neighbor’s goose and well… let’s just say that neighbor wasn’t near as nice as we are about these things! 😒

He was absolutely devastated and so was his daughter who witnessed the entire thing. He wanted to know what we thought of it so we spent a few minutes chatting with him about the legalities versus the morality of shooting a dog who is attacking livestock and we all agreed that the whole situation was just awful all the way around.

We also agreed that none of us would ever shoot a dog unless it was attacking a human, but that’s just us. We gave him some tips on how to better keep a husky contained and told him even our best efforts fail sometimes and we’re lucky our dogs have been caught quickly when they do escape, which is rare thanks to our husky fortress we’ve built for them.

So both of these things happened within a few days of learning my brother had died, but there was more bad news to come.

Not on the same level as my brother dying or the neighbor’s sweet little husky being unfairly killed or my favorite antiques store closing, but still a truly unfortunate event nonetheless!

Remember a couple weeks back when I was dehydrating potatoes and storing them for the end of the world or, you know, just in case I run out of potatoes in the near future (which is rather unlikely since I live in Idaho lol)?

Well that experiment ended badly. 😄

Apparently when I vacuum sealed them they poked little holes I didn’t notice in the bags and all the air ended up sneaking back in there over time. Sigh. I only noticed when I went to move them from the shelf they were on to a different one and all four bags I did were ruined.

Kaput.

Useless.

The potatoes themselves are still good, but they won’t last for years this way so I need to find a new way to store them. I looked at the vacuum sealed canisters that go with my Food Saver but they are pretty spendy and I don’t know if I want to spend $129 to store these potatoes!

I did mention I live in Idaho, right?

So yeah, I mean, if Armageddon happens and I desperately need potatoes I’m pretty sure there is going to be a warehouse full of them within a stone’s throw in every direction here so I don’t think it’s a huge problem. I may have to fight off a few locals to claim my fair share but since I live in Mormon territory they’ll probably share without fighting over them even during Armageddon because they are nice like that. 😊

Still, I do want to be able to save the ones we grow in the future long term so I need to figure something out, without breaking the bank.

I think I might try to dehydrate some shredded ones and see how that goes….