28 May 2024

As the immortal Jadakiss said, “It’s gonna be a real hot Summer.” It’s before noon and I was doing some light yardwork, maybe cut 10 branches with the loopers, when I came inside my clothes were soaked in sweat from head to toe. We’re not even into June yet. Since infantry training in Fort Benning Georgia I’ve said there was the hottest I’ve ever experienced and I’ve seen 134 fahrenheit in Iraq. What happened that day was rain on a sunny day, the rain was gone after a short period and the humidity remained. We then went marching through the woods where more humidity was trapped, it’s a similar feeling doing work in my woods now. I do enjoy the struggle though. My hair is finally long enough to start pulling it back, it’s a relief to not be blinded and battered with wet hair. The project I was working on this morning was creating a pull up bar. When I moved to my new house there wasn’t room for my old bar on the truck, I’ve been without one for awhile and now that life is settling down I’d like to incorporate more exercise into my life. Buying a new one would be the easy but boring solution, so I found a tree with a strong horizontal limb and cleaned off an area for me to do pull ups. The branch should do fine and the only struggle getting up there as the rootball around the tree makes the ground uneven for a ladder. Some day I might hammer some wood onto the trunk for a ladder, but I’m happy with the current set up. An additional benefit to the branch over a bar is that the branch is so thick I can’t wrap my hands around it forcing me to use a gorilla grip which improves grip strength. 

Memorial day 2024

Let me tell you about my friend Lukasz Rogowski, more affectionately know as Rogo. We served together in 1st platoon, Delta company, 4th battalion 31st infantry, 2nd brigade combat team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum. We were some of the first new soldiers assigned to the unit when they returned from their previous deployment. Those were the tough days that made us into men, we were doing push ups all day long as punishment for our big mistake of being new guys. We shared a lot of painful experiences, but Rogo managed to always keep smiling. He must of had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, it helped lightened the load. One time on CQ our squad leader had us holding our hand like binoculars against the window all night constantly scanning and he kept smiling. At JRTC in Louisiana we got in a fight and I said things I still regret, it’s was so hot our brains got fried. That sort of thing was typical and didn’t effect our friendship. Years after I was discharged he reached out asking life advice questions and when he signed off said “don’t be a stranger”, I try to be better at communicating with people now thanks to him. When I saw some odd behavior from him I reached out, knowing what I’ve been through I was afraid he was experiencing a similar situation, I wish I could have done more for him. When he first got to Drum I remember his POV looking like a monster truck, he loved his cars, so I was happy to see after he passed his family had his current vehicle fixed up and it looked great, he would have loved it. I want to give these men more of the honor they deserve so if anyone has stories of Rogo, feel free to share.

24 May 2024

With the riding mower down I still managed to get some smaller tasks done, like the smaller lawn that’s fenced in around the pool. The electric push mower is good for that since I can’t get the riding mower in there anyway. The fenced in grass is probably closer to what most people would consider a normal sized lawn and I’m able to mow it fairly quickly either because it’s so much smaller than what I’m used to or because I’ve spend so many hours mowing now that I’ve got my systems down. Some firsts of lawn care at this place are trimming the weeds and grass that grow around the fence and house, as well as using my new sprayer to hopefully knock back the weeds for a couple weeks. I have a gas weedwacker since I have a lot of use for it. At the old house I’d run through two batteries and still have more work to do, so I needed to switch to gas for that. Electric is nice since it’s just pushing a button to run where gas takes a bit of knowledge of soft touch, I’ve gotten much better at starting the weedwacker which makes me feel good about my progress. As I went around the fence I noticed that getting too closer to the fence would get the cutting strings caught on a chicken wire that’s laid against it. The chicken wire would get cut up, so I have to be more cautious of that in the future. Staying on top of spraying the weed killer solution would keep me from needing to wack over there, so we’ll see. This was also my first time with the new sprayer, my previous one was a pump where this one has a battery and a lock in for the sprayer. My biggest complaint with the old one was my hand getting tired from holding down the lever.

23 May 2024

Good news comes with the bad, I finally made it to the furthest corner of my property only to have another lawn mower belt break seconds later. I know I’m buying cheap belts, but I’m also driving like wild in the forest. There are even mulching blades for the mower that I don’t have, from now on I will stick to mowing grass. Maybe in the future I’ll get a bush hog to make quick work clearing small trees. The problem is I walk around the woods and get excited to clean things up, there’s been many nights I take the dog out for a walk only to go get some tool and start clearing until nightfall. After I had parked the mower I discovered what happened, a vine at least half an inch thick wrapped itself around the back bumper and was rubbing against the pulley system for the belt. The vine was behind me, so I couldn’t see it while riding and still took some struggling to get it free. Once I had the vine in hand I threw it back in the woods, but it made one last move grabbing my wrist and giving a cut. Nature always fights back. It leaves me asking what am I doing, I don’t know why I’m drawn to this and in 10, 20 years things will look unrecognizably different. I don’t know what the end result will be, I’m just following the plan. Reaching the furthest corner, marked by the painted 4×4 in the photo is exciting. Next I can work on clearing that Eastern edge, that will be a lot of chainsaw work, that area is mostly trees that grow in clusters that have bent over the neighbors fence. They will be frustrating to move, so it goes.

22 May 2024

Yesterday I had to rest, usually I rest Monday’s as the weekends are usually a lot of work. The car maintenance had been put off for so long, I wanted to do it last week and needed to postpone it again that this week I needed to get the car into the shop first thing. That way nothing can come up to take priority, that left me with less rest and here I am with a cold again. I am sick of being sick every other week, maybe it’s because I’m not resting enough, but I’m going to see what healthy changes I can make in my lifestyle to help. Because of that not much has gotten done in my life, I’ve been doing some reading to prepare for this week’s podcast. The awkwardness I felt in last week’s episode has guided me to make the most controversial episode yet. We talked about some people being bad and my opinion was to not judge, so I will be going down an extensive list of bad things humans have done so we can rank them. My point is that we don’t judge anyone because this is what it devolves into and even saying some bad deeds hard for the self, so we don’t want to go down this path. We’ll see how the Bois respond and what that leads me to do next. Hopefully this will be a short distraction since I wanted to talk about war tactics and have even been studying the old infantry field manual. The military FMs are full of valuable information that I seldom saw people reading, most of the knowledge was passed down verbally. Once I encountered the verbal rules not being what the book rules were, when I tried to make the correction I got in trouble. That is one reason I got out, leadership that valued their ego over the rules. 

20 May 2024

The car’s oil has finally been changed! I’m bad with car maintenance and waited so long the car would give an alert every time it turns on, then I still drove it like that for another three thousand miles. There will be cars in the wild that have trash bags over a window or a bungie cord holding the bumper up and I feel better about myself. As life improves it’s hard for the standard of living to not improve with it, I worry as much about overdue oil now as I worried about my bumper flapping in the wind then. Another example is how I used to eat and drink anything, now I think how rotten food might get me sick. It’s over now and I’ll regain a lot of space in my head where that worry was waiting. I can look up again and figure out what I need to focus on next. The trail blazing in the forest is going well, lately I’ve been working to cut feeder paths allowing everything to be connected to everything. With the new tree I revealed last week, I cleaned up some paths around it to create a new area or I think of them as rooms since they it feels like they have walls and a roof. This week I’m hoping to take the mower to the farthest corner of the property, that will be a happy day. The corner that’s equally far back but on the opposite side is close to where the neighbors house is, that makes it not so entrenched in woods and I’m less inclined to clear it out. My favorite neighbors are the ones I never see. My chainsaw still needs to be tightened, it came loose while working last week and is only a single bolt to fix. When I was done with the work I didn’t have the energy and now it sits in the shed.

17 May 2024

The transition away from bottles for the baby this week has gone well. There was some struggling the first couple days, but after that she’s done great and I don’t think there’s been any resistance yesterday or today. She’s a great kid and we love her more everyday. We recorded the Wrecking and Rapping podcast last night and there were some sensitive subjects mentioned, not sensitive to me, there more subjects I have to be careful what I say. A lot of what I say is to break down people’s preconceived notions and that requires a sensitive touch as well since it’s ill advised to damage a persons world view, especially if you haven’t given them anything to replace it with. To provide people with a world view is why I preach the Bible though I know the resistance to that people have. My work has to be done slowly, but other people might push it along since they think they know where I’m headed, that can leave them with whiplash when I do twist around. I hope things are going well and that I’ll help more than I hurt, this is the path I must travel so only dwell on it as long as it’s helpful. Outside of that life is pretty standard, we went to the grocery store and the baby got upset because we were going to buy apples but she wasn’t allowed to eat them then and there. While the baby was crying a stranger said to me, “You better stop beating that kid.” It’s always astonishing the things people think is okay to say when I’m out with the baby. Maybe they lose their minds if they’re not around kids usually. Another time someone pointed out to me that she was upset, like I couldn’t tell from the ear piercing scream. 

16 May 2024

The days are starting to heat up again and there’s nothing like working in a forest where the humidity has no where to go. I was out in the forest this morning with my chainsaw and hedge trimmer combo, there were a couple different path I wanted to extend. The paths weren’t suitable for guests to walk through with so many low hanging branches and random thorny sticks coming from the ground. The work today cleared up space for my mower to drive by and create a nice bed of grass. There was one big tree that had fallen before I moved in that I cut into pieces and cleared out, there were also a couple different trees that had bent into the paths I wanted, so those got taken out too. I’m really excited to see what it looks like after my next pass with the mower, though after breaking my belt a couple weeks ago I’m hesitant to go galavanting in the woods. Act without fear. I made an Instagram story of one of the paths I cleared because my Facebook page has challenges to level up and it wants me to create five stories. The levels don’t mean anything, I’m just always working on making number go up. After that the only thing I have to do for the next level is get 1,000 followers, so I’ll share the link if anyone would like to help out. These blog posts and podcast content are also shared there. Who knows maybe I’ll keep making stories. 

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085102509430

15 May 2024

When I laid down to rest yesterday I fell asleep for longer than I expected and at night I had a neck pain that I associate with the tick bite. This morning I was worried that the meat allergy was beginning, it’s been almost two weeks and three weeks is how long it took last time. There’s been no reaction so far today, so I’m probably just dealing with another cold. On Monday when I picked up the baby from daycare I noticed some green snot from her nose. I’ll take a cold everyday of the week over alpha gal, still it will be a couple more weeks before I can sleep comfortably. The reason I got bit in the first place was complacency, I took the dog for a walk around the property in slippers instead of my tall boots. That mistake will not happen again and I’m regularly spraying those boots with bug spray. That’s left me mostly resting these two days, we’ve been doing a lot of smaller unpacking tasks, there’s still several boxes of stuff laying around the house. The boxes don’t have things we use regularly so it’s been fine to let them sit, they still take up space and keep us from fully appreciating our house. With having guests coming in the Summer we’d like to get the house as far along as possible, plus having a clean and unpacked house feels good, we can enjoy our stuff better. We have an A frame jungle gym that I put together yesterday that was taking up a lot of space, now it’s outside. There was also a lot of rain the last couple days and I’ve been able to get some good photos of mushrooms growing.

13 May 2024

We’ve had a successful day of work already, the big item on the to-do list was installing a bidet for my wife. The job kept getting post poned due to one thing or another, I was sick for about two weeks, and like I’ve said the longer something sits on a list the scarier it becomes. Plumbing work is always scary, there’s the fear that once I take the system apart that I won’t succeed in putting it together and water will keep flowing until my house is sunk. Thankfully there doesn’t appear to be any leaks, I’ve gotten meticulous with plumbers tape and owning a basin wrench is a big help. It’s been said that if a job is hard it’s because you don’t have the right tool, the basin wrench makes all the tight quartered bolts easy to turn. There’s also a good deal of physics at work, that being the creation of torque in a small space and even how the wrench head grabs the bolt while twisting. The weekend went well, my sister in law was visiting and having guests is always tiring, but we stayed around the house. We began planning a trip for some of my family to visit and that will be a lot of fun to have a full house, very tiring too. Today is the beginning of no more bottles for my baby, it’s been a long time coming, with the move and sicknesses that also kept getting delayed. The switch has already happened though and there will be no going back. Apparently staying on bottles too long causes problems to the kid’s teeth, my wife said she started to notice it, so I’m move driven to commit. I cut some flowers from around the house for Mother’s day, feel free to enjoy.