I realized when I saw a CNN fluff story on the basics of survival in winter that it was likely that James Kim didn't survive after his departure from his wife and young children, so I looked it up and confirmed my fears.

I have spent a long time reading about herbs and plants identifying plants in the wild and I know a lot of stuff about survival. I also overpack my car.

I often overpack the kitchen -- it's kind of a panic thing. I can't remember half of what I have at home, so I buy it just in case, because you can't ever have too much pasta or spaghetti sauce, you know? My mom did that, too. She is particularly bad with clothing. I always had way too many clothes and I still do, as do my kids. My son makes fun of me for always making sure he has extra clothes. Genny grows so fast that it's not uncommon for her not to get to wear some clothes because she grows out of them before she gets to wear them. I'm getting better. If it doesn't fit, I get rid of it and move on. I used to keep all of my many sizes and now, I keep the size that fits and donate most everything else. I still have stuff I forget about...I pack away summer stuff and forget I did it and then find it mid-winter, cursing all the while.

And I often think about the phrase,"live simply so that others may simply live" and I think about ways to reduce, clean up, etc. And I've gotten a lot better. I could certainly improve even more, and I struggle with my OCD-ness and my missing brain, but I have taken to writing things down. Organizing my life makes more sense and is less wasteful and that's a good thing.

On the good news front, though, (in light of this news story) I always overpack the car on trips. I always have an extra jug of water. I always pack food. I always pack blankets or towels. In winter, I always think of packing for an emergency. I don't know why I do that either, but when we had to drive over the passes on the trip home from Florida, 2 years ago, even though it was on a main drag, I bought a case of water bottles, 2 gallons of water, sandwich stuff, fruits, snacks, and juice. I bring lighters.

And as I read the part of the news story, when the mother was nursing the two kids to get them through, I was thinking about what I would have done. And when I read that they had brought some baby food jars, a jar of jam and some water, I realized that I would have brought more with me because I'm crazy and obsessive and I think about that kind of thing. And I would have been sucking on pine needles for vitamin C and poking around under the snow for any plants I could have located because I know that kind of stuff and I know what to look for.

And it's not a critique of their family at all. Most normal people wouldn't be so freakishly obsessive-compulsive to pack all that kind of crap on a main drag (which is where they started) nor would they have this vast repository of essentially useless information about wild plant identification and usage floating around in their heads (unless they were a freaking lumberjack or a boy scount).

It was just that I was thinking about what would I do? How would I react? And I realized that I would have been better prepared because while my husband bitches about how much I pack into a car, he never questions my logic when I do it.

I had a shivering realization -- even though I drive myself and others up a tree with my ocd behaviors at times, that I'm thankful that I am who I am -- spazz worrywart that I am. Ironically, I then wished that the Kims had been half as crazy as I am because they might have been better prepared, so that they had all survived.