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.
10 May 2024
Another satisfying week, for the first time since I’ve moved here over two months ago I’ve finally mowed all of the grass on my property. The grass on the West side gets covered in shade by the tree line leaving it to grow slower. The bees are also on the West side making it the first time I mowed around the bees. Since I didn’t want to get attacked while mowing I did my wellness check on the bees immediately before mowing in hopes they would still be pacified by the smoke. There were no bee attacked and they’re doing great, this was the first time I was able to see they’re making honey. I still can’t really find the queen since they built their own combs instead of building on the frames I can remove and I have zero experience spotting the queen. As long as everything looks fine, I’m happy. With mowing, I continued clearing areas in the woods. It had also been awhile since I mowed the previous paths and gave them a cut. A process the forest floor is going through is my first mow clears out brush and layers of dead leaves, this allows grass to begin growing. My second pass of freshly revealed forest puts the grass at a nice height creating a comfortable forest floor. There are still parts of the forest I’m revealing and I’m almost to the back edge, I was mapping out the path I will attempt to cut next time to do so. Then I will work on the Eastern edge of the forest which has trees growing over the neighbors fence, that’ll be a lot of chainsaw work before I can mow.
9 May 2024
Yesterday’s post was about a memorial stone placed under an oak tree, here is a picture of the oak tree. The stone is being overtaken by the roots of the tree, when it was placed over 100 years ago wouldn’t have been nearly as big and now it dwarfs the house next to it. This tree is also a sign for me to be here and for new beginnings since the tree is dead. This might not be obvious since the tree itself doesn’t know it’s dead, there are leaves growing on the branches. When a tree gets cut down it will still grow new branches and leaves, it’s using the energy stored with in. Upon closer inspection of the tree, all of the big limbs have broken in the past, that’s how to know it’s secretly dead. Those broken limbs will continue to sprout new branches and leaves, then the weight will be too much for the unhealthy limb and break again, this process will continue until only the trunk stands or the whole thing falls. Thankfully it doesn’t look like the tree will and if it did it wouldn’t be towards the house. The falling branches are likely to knock out the power line connected to the house, looking at where the line connects it seems this has happened in the past and ripped off some exterior wood. We’ll deal with that as it happens. My neighbor shared some videos she had taken interviewing previous owners of our house where they had shown pictures of what it used to look like. Through my wife’s friend who is related to the woman on the memorial stone we were able to get a photo of her. It’s hard to believe there’s so much history here, that we could access it, and are stewards to it.
8 May 2024
When we were visiting our neighbor for eggs, they told us about a tombstone that was under a big oak tree. Yesterday, I found the stone and as it’s over 100 years old the tree has grown so large the roots are overtaking it. We were then able to find out who the person referenced is and also found that she had a daughter. That daughter ended up dying in the exact town we just moved from and when my wife posted about it online a friend from high school messaged saying that daughter was the friends great grandmother. How is it possible that we would have a direct connection to the person that lived in the same house as us over 100 years ago unless it was all part of a plan. I’ve said before that I stopped making plans and this is what that looks like, falling into the place I’m meant to be. If we didn’t live in the house before this one, I wouldn’t have the experience or desire to live where we are now. That doesn’t mean I know what’s going to happen next, I will keep doing the work I believe to be right and I do that work knowing it matters. Same as it mattered when that daughter moved from this town to that and we brought it full circle. 2024 is shaping up to be a significant year, in my podcast I’m always preaching the importance for people to stay sharp. When events begin to unfold we have to be ready and able to move with them. We don’t want to slip through the cracks. In my audiobook while mowing C. S. Lewis said, “if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
7 May 2024
Today was still mostly spent resting, I had some coughing fits last night that kept my wife awake and I’d like to knock this thing out completely. Yesterday I got some smaller tasks done that had been waiting awhile and the longer a task sits undone the harder it becomes to start. Our bathroom didn’t have a toilet paper roll holder, it was only two screws to hang it, but day after day of seeing it sitting on the floor turns it into a monster of a project. There’s also the little difficulty of all my tools are still semi packed, that means I have to go on a search before I can even start the project. The lawnmower belt has been replaced and afterwards I wanted to check that it worked so I hadn’t put the floor of the mower on, that allowed me to see the belt move. There is a spring that keeps tension on one of the pulleys and I could see the belt was touching the spring. I’ve never seen the belt moving before, so I don’t know if it has touched the spring in the past, but now I know that it’s happening it’s something I’ll continue to worry about. At night our neighbor texted me that they have extra eggs for me, they have chickens and I eat three eggs a day for breakfast, so I had let them know I can eat any extras they have. My wife and I went over to their farm as they had never met her and we got to see more of their set up. They have been here for 14 years and a lot of what they have is what I’d like to build someday. We came home with three dozen eggs and picked a large cup full of fresh strawberries.
6 May 2024
Last week was rough, that cold kept on lingering and I’m still dealing with residual effects from it. Then on Friday I woke up and noticed a lone star tick attached to my leg. About three years ago I was bit by a lone star tick and it gave me an alpha gal meat allergy, it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I would of course have a allergic reaction anytime I ate food with meat in it, but as time went on discovered the reaction extended to anything with a meat byproduct in it such as gelatin. That meant when I took a Benadryl pill to help with the reaction, my body then had a reaction to the meat byproduct used to make pressed pills, and the reactions were so wide spread it even extended to using tooth paste. For five months I was suffering trying to figure out what was happening to me and we were able to fix it with acupuncture. There is a procedure invented in 1950’s France where they put micro needles in my ear, those needles had to stay put for three weeks before being removed. Afterwards things began to get better, but the experience still haunts me. For years I’ve asked myself what am I afraid of and never had an answer, this weekend I realized I’m afraid of those ticks, so when I pulled it off and saw I was bitten it was not a good day or weekend. We’ll see in the coming weeks if contract the alpha gal allergy though in the meantime I’m trying to deal with it knowing the solution that it should only be three weeks of struggle. Other than that I’m trying to get back on my feet since I haven’t been able to do anything except care for the baby for at least a week.
1 May 2024
On today’s episode of tantrum over nothing, I wouldn’t let the baby eat cashews. With being sick I went a couple days of eating practically nothing and I’ve been stuck between starving and stomach pain from over eating, so I had a bag of cashews to snack on during the drive to daycare. On the way out the baby saw the bag and wanted to play with it, at this point if she wants something she’ll throw a fit unless she gets it. Fine she can take the bag, I had plenty of other stuff to carry anyway, including her. Then when we’re driving she wants the bag open, cashews seem like a choking hazard, so I wasn’t going to let her eat them. The tantrum ensues since I won’t open the bag and I take it back since I need to eat anyway, we had a lovely car ride of screaming the whole way. It’s interesting to watch kids go through phases, I said yesterday that she’s unreasonable right now whereas a month ago she could be reasoned with. She’s still sweet in between it all and my lines are definitive. Eventually she’ll grow out of it and will start debating me with full sentences instead, after all why can’t she have Andes mints for breakfast? Food is food, at least I have the books on the shelf to prove not all food is equal. That does excite me to be to have conversations with her and to be challenged to new heights. I had said I don’t have anyone to look at for an example of growth, she will quickly catch up to me and show me where I need to go.
30 April 2024
Being sick hit hard this weekend and with the baby recovering from being sick takes longer since there’s no rest. I’m still feeling a little under the weather today and wasn’t going to write except we have a repairman here today doing maintenance on the HVAC system, so I have to do something while I wait. As the baby got over her sickness it felt like she had entered toddler mode where she’s been very clingy and fussy about everything. For instance I was trying to put her down at night and she asked for, I grabbed the book she pointed to, she breaks down in tears. When we had a newborn, her crying would shut down my brain to where I couldn’t do anything until it was resolved, now I’ve heard so much crying that I can at least manage. We were driving home from daycare and they had given her a tiny cup of water, the sort a dentist would have for the patient to rinse. She was chewing the cup and a sliver of plastic got stuck in between her teeth. I had to pull over so I could pull it out, but then she wanted to be held. We still needed to drive home and that’s what I did, she cried the whole way refusing anything I offered, no rest. Of course during these struggles, last Friday, the trash truck dropped our can in the truck leaving us without a place to put our trash, then they said it could take up to two weeks to get a new can. I still haven’t had time to replace my lawn mower belt, when it rains it pours. By the end of this week everything will probably be doing great, hopefully, once I feel better and can start cleaning up messes. For now rest as much as possible.
Chris' Morning Pages 