I get a text this morning from my wife asking if we have any gas. I ask her to clarify, even though i am pretty sure she means gasoline. The power was on when I left this morning... maybe its off now?
She texts back confirming its gasoline she is after. I tell her sure, there's 18 gallons in the remote tank, and 6 sceptre cans in the barn. Almost 50 gal total. I assume hearing this quantity will alleviate any concerns she might have about running the generator until the juice comes back on. Well, I get busy at work for a while and don't make it back to my phone for about an hour. Her response indicates that several of her coworkers are unable to fuel their cars because the power is out in town, and none of the gas stations are open.



The cars she was asking to fuel are personal vehicles used to deliver rural mail routes for USPS.
Most of her fellow employees are folks I wouldn't think twice about loaning $20 to... but the fact that they all know that we have $200+ in fuel onhand bothers me considerably.

I supplied a few Aquatainers for potable water when the office was without water last year due to a main break... So now they know we have fuel and water covered

hmmmm the .gov asking for the stored resources of it's citizens......

soon to be a regular occurrence.

Poor judgement on both of your parts.

There was a storm and the mail was held back for two days. So what? That's not an emergency. It's barely qualifies as an inconvenience. If the town is without utilities, would you even notice that the mail had lapsed?
The mail not being delivered for a day or two is hardly a good reason to deplete you own supplies; especially if you're in a storm damaged area and still might need to rely on the provisions for yourself. It is downright frivolous to go from stocked to barren with nothing at stake.

On your end, you know that she's an information hemorrhage. You should manage more closely. "Do we have any gas?" warrants a phone call rather than assumptions and text messages.

If you had called and she told you that she wanted to know if there was gas to put in her coworker's cars, you would know that she had already told them that she might be able to supply some, and may have had the presence of mind to tell her that there was only a gallon for the mower, so that they could all hear her disappointed response of, "oooohhh .... I thought we might .... no, huh .... okay ....."

start it at 20 usd per gallon. And Im not kidding.

Sorry to hear but there is hope.

My wife would have done the same thing in the not so distant past. However, this past fall we had a middle aged lady run out of gas in front of our house. My wife was the first to talk with her and she came to me and asked first. We have a small 2 gal can for just such occurrences, we gave it to her and she returned the can. Then, a few days later she stopped by with another new 2 gallon can full and left it at our door.

Again, I am can say with almost certainty, a few years ago we would have filled up her car out of our main storage tank. Not so much now.

S-1

Im glad to hear this... I keep waiting on some of this stuff to "click".

My wife and I have been down on our luck before, and when in that position its hard to help others. Now that we have our shit together, we're in a position of relative strength. I can't fault her for trying to help out people who need it, but she doesn't really get that helping is for people who need help, not people who are stupid. We have had folks run out of gas on the closest road before, and she has taken them a couple of gallons. Maybe she was thinking that since it was her coworkers it was ok.

We're remote enough that we can run a generator for days and nobody will hear it. Our closest neighbors are a mile away.

I like it!
Strategic oil reserve=postal gas reserve?

These are private vehicles, so the argument will be made that if I don't expect somebody to fill my car when its empty so I can go to work, they shouldn't either.

Just how far away is the next unaffected town with a gas station?

It's Sunday, no mail delivery today, power may be on tomorrow and fuel may be obtained.

Good catch. I actually typed this yesterday, but only just had a chance to post.
Town is 7 miles away. next closest fuel is 12 miles further than that.

nope... she has already seen it. The only part of Miss Theron's characters (the wife/mom) behavior she didn't at least kinda sympathize with was offing yourself with a kid to care for, or seriously considering offing your own kid too.

In addition to the OPSEC lecture, remember to ask her why the next time she asks where the preps are.