5 August 2024

Lately my princess has had a word explosion, almost everything that comes out of my mouth she’s able to repeat, or at least attempt to. Recently we’ve been putting effort into reading with her more and I’m glad we are since I need to say more words. She’ll catch up to my abilities quickly and I have to increase acceleration to postpone it, a rising tide lifts all boats. Towards the end of pregnancy and the initial newborn I see as our weakest position and use that to calm myself whenever I begin to worry. I remember the exhaustion the first time around and remember I reached new levels of strength after recovering, but before restarting the cycle. Today I’ll be working on the patch of tall grass again, it shouldn’t take long to finishing trimming and then I’ll go over everything with the mower. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and I’ll release that from my mind. There’s still some coughing problems, mostly it’s a mental battle that I cough when I feel an itch which continues to the issue. I’d like to start doing some cardio exercise if I can find the time. I’ve finally added a pull up bar inside my house, it works better than I planned as I’ve found a tall doorway for it. Initially I was doing pull ups on a tree branch which I still like the idea, the only problem was the ground around the tree isn’t perfectly flat, so using a ladder to get up there was dangerous. Then I got a power cage that has pull up bars, but they were too low and there is a metal bar in the back that my feet kept hitting. As always I’m grateful for the experience and glad I found a resolution. 

2 August 2024

Most of the tall grass got cut yesterday, and I would feel comfortable driving my mower over the rest. On Monday I’ll likely finish what I started with the weed wacker, since the mower just got fixed I’d like to baby it for a little bit. Though I did use the mower to cut the forest ground, not the woody part, but where I’ve cleared before that had begun to over grow. Around January I’ll try to change the mower to mulching blades and clear more forest floor. There’s bigger machinery I could use except bigger cuts means more collateral damage. As I was clearing the forest the first time I was careful to avoid a lot of vines that I liked for the aesthetic and now that they’re growing I can see those vines are muscadine grapes, it’s a good thing I wasn’t cutting wildly. What I noticed while trimming the grass is the sound an engine makes when it’s overwhelmed, it’s happened with the mower before where I’m going too fast over too much grass and it shuts down. It’s interesting to build a relationship with a machine that I can hear it complaining, then I can take things easier. During my time cutting, I was working on my technique to see what is best. My hypothesis is it’s best to do a sort of sawing motion on the left side, though it’s not yet mastered and there were times I was swinging wildly out of exhaustion. There was also a need to continuously switch hands on the trigger and thus what side I hold the trimmer on. After I was done my hands continued to feel the shaking like I was still holding the machine for the better part of the day. It was a good days work and very satisfying to be able to walk around there again, I never like owning an area that’s inaccessible. 

1 August 2024

My queen is traveling for work today and I was left alone with the princess. I’m 36 and she’s over 2 years old, still the idea of being left alone with her scares me. We did the same things as normal and she was fine, inside I feel like I’m not an adult and don’t know what to do with a kid. That feeling of doubt will probably never go away, nor do I want it to, complacency kills and I’d rather be safe than sorry. When it comes to caring for the newborn though I’m confident in my abilities, I can say I’ve done it once and the second time will be easier. Being handed a crying baby doesn’t scare me anymore, I have the muscle memory. In the beginning I had to learn how to make the microscopic movement a baby needs, all my life I’ve done big movement with heavy objects. After this I’ll go out to do some yard work, there’s a patch of grass that grows fast. When my mower went down it got to an unreasonable height, so the landscaper didn’t mow it either and now it’s waist high in some parts. I’ll spend some time with the weed wacker making some big swings, once it’s cut back to normal tall grass I’ll go over it with my mower. Having that area cleaned up will be good, it’s on the edge of the forest and from what the landscaper told me it used to be some forest which would explain why it grows faster than anything around it. The tall grass invites wildlife, good and bad, but even good nature brings bad to humans. Deer sleep in the tall grass and they bring ticks. Snakes will also hid in the grass or I’ve even seen them on the edge of it. A tortoise has been seen there, but it wasn’t hurting anyone. 

31 July 2024

Yesterday was my birthday, I’m now 36 years old and didn’t feel doing any writing. As of late I’ve been less motivated to write and generally felt low energy, my guess is allergies since I shouldn’t be as tired as I feel. We’re now in the last month before the new baby comes and as I’ve been preparing our home, I’m getting less invested in the internet. The blog has been doing well lately which I’m grateful for, but in the first days of a new born I know that will be the only thing I have energy for. Right now it’s like I’m in a trilogy of books, the second one has already concluded it’s action and the third has yet to start. Every year I write a letter to myself to be read the next birthday, last years letter was mostly that life is good and stable. Right now I feel the same way and am prepared for the next big adventure. The first day of school was yesterday in my county, by the time my second daughter is the age of the first, the elder will be starting school. The adventures continue to rotate through the cast of characters. For myself the ever changing adventure is the land, the landscaper had killed some trees that will have to be replaced some day. Around November is when my grapes will be shipped, and yesterday I finally added more frames to my bee box. It had been awhile since I checked in on the bees and they seem to be doing well, I’m glad the land is a good environment for them. We’ll see how things go with the new baby, but I’d like to get started on chickens in the next couple years, even if it is just one as a pet. There’s a lot to learn. Every Winter I’ll work on clearing more of the forest, it shouldn’t be too long until the parameter is cleared, but it’s work that depends on free time.

26 July 2024

We had a rough recording of the podcast last night, there were technical difficulties that caused the Bois not to hear or see me at times. The problems shouldn’t be obvious to the listener, but whenever this sort of thing happen it puts a fire in me since it’s no fault of the humans. We’re doing the same things as always, but the computers are having a problem. Still it’s my show and a representation of me, I don’t like when things make me look bad, which was also something we discussed on the show. The combination of that discussion and technical difficulties has got me energized to strike back with a vengeance, shaking me out of grind building a channel. It’s me against me, nothing matter except that I hit harder than I did last time. The technical side of things isn’t me, it’s just a means through which people have access to me. Getting tangled up will slow me down. All that means I need to study, first I plan to read Henry Kissinger’s book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy because I believe he shaped the world we live in today. He laid out his plan in that book and taught future leader in highly exclusive classes. Knowing the rules to the game will lead me to have better success in it. After that there will be a fury of growth as physically I’ll be bottle necked by caring for the newborn. I’m outraged with how people act and am going to assert the power I’ve always had despite people thinking we’re born to be controlled.

25 July 2024

I’ve been resting like I’ve never rested before, seriously I don’t think I’ve ever slept this much. My cough seems to be gone, so resting did it’s job. This wouldn’t be possible without my mower breaking down and needing to have someone else mow the lawn, even with everything taken care of I was stressing a little bit about the grass. Today the tractor repairman was able to fix my mower and I learned he was an artillerymen when he was in the Army. Of course infantry is my favorite, but artillery gets some of my respect, they are the queen and king of battle respectfully. I’m happy to live in the country, everything is cheaper than I expect and maybe it’s the military background that makes these guys easy for me to work with. When working with others in the past I’ve thought, I only care about getting the job done, the guy pulled up with his truck and got it done in the driveway in probably 30 minutes. With talking to vets my age I’ve noticed most spent time in Afghanistan, my thinking is that I might be from an older generation since I joined younger than most and Iraq was the bigger focus in my time. I’m grateful to have made these two connections for landscaping and equipment repair since they’re guys I liked and they’re two jobs that I’m most likely to need. Having these resources is a big weight off my mind going into the new baby as that will become my main focus. Something I would like to get done soon is building my bee frames, they need to be hammered together and then added on top of the hive I’ve got. It’s been awhile since I’ve opened the hive, they’ve probably built all over the place in there, but I think they could use some more room.

22 July 2024

The weekend of cousins visiting was a success. When playing in the pool one of the kids broke a pipe that sprays water and Alex said the prophesy was fulfilled of having guests break things, but unlike other guests it was fixed before they left. This concludes the end of my Summer visitors and with my princess back in daycare this week I’m going to lay in bed as much as possible to recover. The past couple weeks I’ve been having mucus build up in my throat causing me to cough a lot during the nights, it’s created some bad sleep for the queen and I. Now that I’ve got some time to rest she got me a steroid pack and we can get back to normal life. Some highlights from the weekend were celebrating my birthday with a big key lime flavored cake, so big that by the end of the weekend there was still half of a cake left. Having a traditional cake and everyone gathered around the dinner table was nice. Another nice experience was laying down a tarp inside so the kids could do some painting together. During the painting a wasp got in the house and the room we were painting in has a tall ceiling, maybe 20 ft, it made for the comical scene chasing the bug around with a long pool skimmer. The final night we played some bird board game on the Nintendo switch, it took hours and at the end of the night it was just the brothers talking. It’s nice to develop this new adult relationship, we all grew up sharing a room and needed some personal space after that. When it came to picking favorites or characters to related to everyone had to have their own to be an individual. Coming together now everyone provides a piece that makes up the family.