Last night felt like our first real night at the new house, we’re finally getting some time to slow down and enjoy what we have. Mary and I sat at home to play video games, it was probably the first time we ever did and I loved it. I’ll still be going back to the old place to get what’s left and to clean up until the end of the month. If there was an accidental fire that burned the whole place down, I wouldn’t need to clean it, the fire cleans all. Ah, but all my plants are still there, I want to make a trip to bring over a truck load of plants, but I’m dog tired and don’t know what the odds of that happening are. Today is also my pups birthday, he’s six years old though he’s got the energy of a six month old. Yesterday was when he found out there are deer in his front yard, we’ll see how that goes. There was a lot of staring and afterwards he wanted to go outside to “play”, but there wasn’t any barking, which is my main concern. He’s all grown up though, soon he’ll be dragging in venison and putting food on the table. I would give him his own room, but I think the closer he sleeps to me, the happier he is. I don’t know what we’ll do for the pups birthday, my wife wants to get him some presents from the pet store, so I’m sure he’ll be properly pampered. He pampers us too, so he deserves it. He’s gotten really comfortable on his back to where my wife and I can be laying down and I’ll pull him up to lay in between us. It’s all belly scratching and ear rubs from then on and he loves it.
Great Ball of Fire
Internet and furniture are at the new place, we’re officially moved in. There was even a beautiful sunrise when I woke up this morning to let the dog out. I’ll get to start everyday off with this view. What wonderful life I’ve been given. I’m watching the sun climb over the distant trees as I write this. Perhaps it will start shinning in my eye, I’ll let it for a little bit, the burn helps me know I’m not dreaming. There’s still so much to do, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed. When I let the dog out I noticed a bunch of spider webs on the porch, so I went to work with the bug spray. That led me to find the makings of a hornets nest, I sent them a strong message that they don’t want to build on my house. Then I found some ivy growing up the foundation and had to pull it off, that’s when I stopped myself. The sun isn’t even over the horizon, I’m supposed to be resting, get some breakfast. After this weekend I’ll hopefully be able to control myself better and the place will feel more like ours.
Oh yeah, I have some house keeping notes. I’ve been taking Sundays off from doing any work, but I noticed that the weekend and specifically Sunday is the most popular day for my blog, so I will resume posting my blog on Sunday instead of Monday. No blog posted on Monday, but all other content should remain the same. That sun is really digging into me now, I’m definitely alive and it’s beautiful. I’m very happy and grateful for everyone that helped me get to this point in my life. I know I can be a brat when I’m continually pushing for what I want. Hopefully I don’t hurt anyone too much and that I put more good into this world than bad.
From Binos to Ginos
When I was younger, sleep was one of my favorite activities and now it gets in the way of me being able to do actual activities. There’s never enough hours in the day and there’s even less wick to burn per day. Sleep is needed to be able to greet the next morning. I had another 5 AM wake up, this time from my wife hitting me. Because I get sleep paralysis, my wife knows to try and wake me up when I’m making groans. When I’m stuck in a dream and know it, I’ll struggle with all my might and in the real world it translates to some light rolling and noises. That’s the signal Mary looks for and that’s why she woke me up. Strange that it was about the same time I woke up naturally yesterday morning. All this sleep talk reminds me that I wanted to document how I sleep. After the world went crazy and I saw everyone was hooked into crazy juice from their phones, I said I’m not bringing my phone into the bedroom anymore. Right now the only thing I have on my bedside table is a watch. When I wake up in the middle of the night my brain needs to be reassured I have more than 20 mins left to sleep before it will relax. That’s the only update I need.
Now I’m waiting for the movers to arrive. They’re arriving early than planned, which happens to work out because yesterday the internet didn’t get set up as a result of a scheduling error and was rescheduled for today. Today is the big move and I’ll have to juggle a couple things. I find the hardest item to keep track of is the dog. Usually I isolate him to a room, but if people are coming and going all over that won’t be possible. I’ll have to disassemble and reassemble his crate a couple times, but it’s a small price to pay to contain that fireball.
Literal lumination like light
Last night’s sleep was revitalizing, my engines have been fueled and are ready to take off. I woke up around 5:30 this morning ready to jump out of bed, instead I hung out until my wife’s alarm went off an hour later. For a little while I’ve been good about maintaining a sleep schedule and it pays off with new life. When I look at my horizon I feel free, that makes everyday a personal adventure and I wake up thinking, “Oh boi, I can’t wait to shave and vacuum”, no joke. Discipline builds habits and healthy habits make activities more enjoyable. I’m not doing work for the man to give me a performance review, but I’m helping myself. Maintaining healthy habits is like building a brick house, it’s work that takes time and precision. Eventually shelter from the storm is created, but consistency is key. If I were laying brick and decided to take a sabbatical, then the rain might come and wash away my work. In the early stages, even a couple rows of brick can be taken down by ivy or an overgrown shrub. Everything has its place and time to shine. Today the internet gets moved to the new house and tomorrow the furniture does. Before you know I’ll be scything my fields and wiping sweat from my brow. I don’t plan on getting scyth, though they do look cool, there are more practical ways to cut grass without twisting and shouting in pain. I look forward to a riding mower because that feels very peaceful, even Forrest Gump continued mowing the school fields after he was a cogillianair because he liked doing it so much. That’s sort of how I feel about swinging an axe or a mattock, maybe that’s why prison always appealed to me. The worst punishment is being left completely alone and breaking stones all day long. I’ve gone out of my way to make that my reality.
Holy Holiday
Good morning, I’ve got most of the small stuff out of the house and we’ll have some movers help with the furniture. Tomorrow the internet gets switched over to the new place and we’ll quickly follow. Then we can begin “unpacking” because right now I’ve been hauling loads over and dumping stuff in whatever clean corner catches my eye. There’s a certain degree of cleaning that needs to be done before settling in and we might rent a dumpster for a day or something because the old owners left a bunch of stuff. They left some great furniture, like a beautiful table with eight chairs, but there’s just as much broken junk. Plus the previous owners had farm animals, so there’s additional trash for that. The two sheds down by the pond that will one day be great, most recently they’ve been used to house chickens and will also need some cleaning. There will be a never ending list of things to do because that’s owning a house, so I’m glad to be documenting my days. I think this is going to work out nicely. Today I’m mostly around the old place, I’m going to mow the lawn for the last time and have got to sign for a package. I was trying to explain that I want to make what I do look more like a job because I feel people think my availability means I’m available. I’m always working, sitting still, I’m probably building something in my head or piecing together a plan for what’s next. You won’t know if you’re going the right way without a plan. I also realized yesterday how connected people are to their phones. As crazy as this may sound, I go out of my way to not have my phone around me during the day because I see it as a distraction.
Unsightly Sightseers
I feel a lot better after taking my day off. Before the house, my energy tends to run out by Fridays, so with all the extra running around I crashed hard on Saturday. I may have had a migraine, but my body was exhausted and I hadn’t been eating. If you didn’t know already, the guy who writes a blog talking to himself and records a podcast talking to himself, this guy has social anxiety. When the time came close on the house, I was laying in the fetal position because of the stabbing in my stomach I get from those types of situations. I needed some time to reset after that. Hopefully things clear up and I’ll work until the tank runs low at the end of the week again. On social anxiety, I was talking to a friend recently and he has to quit his job because he found a new one. We were talking about him having to tell his boss and how awful that experience is. Talking to anyone is an awful experience in our shoes, but he called himself a “coward” because he was afraid to make the call. My response was, “I volunteered for a war and I ran away from making that call, so don’t be so hard on yourself.” There are different types of people and they fear different things. If two people are walking towards me, one with a weapon and the other is smiling and reaching for a handshake, I’m probably more afraid of the person smiling; I know what to do about a person with a weapon. I’ve studied a couple books to know what I’m supposed to do in conversations although now that I’ve got my own land I couldn’t care less if strangers accept me socially. The take away is to be kind to each other because we never know what someone else is going through. I can handle a lot of pain, but the worst pains I experience are invisible to the eye.
Who knows how the flow goes
This is just hunch, but I may not be as young as I used to be. I’ve began moving into the new house and when I woke up this morning, my whole body was sore. There’s an initial fear when I wake up and my back is hurting, that fear says, “You can’t do what you used to do, quit now.” Mental fortitude has me telling that fear to get lost, we’ve been on lockdown for month and it’s been difficult to find the motivation for exercise. Combined with the stress of paperwork the last couple weeks, my body has to be built up. When I’m tired, I need to rest and when I’m feeling strong, I’ll let go of the reins. On one hand, moving is an exhausting event that will be over shortly, but the other side is that I want my days to be filled with physical labor. I’m going to be building structures, planting trees, and constantly moving heavy things from here to there. That’s a lifestyle that I want to live and I can live it, but it is far from the lifestyle I’m currently living. It’s going to take time to get to where I want to be. I can only get there if I’m getting appropriate rest when my body needs it. Change takes time, so today I’m going to rest as much as I can. I’ll probably end up taking some stuff to the new house because we’ll probably go over there to enjoy it. The house is still so new that it has to be broken in, but really what it’s missing is internet. My intention is to set up a big mesh of internet around the house, so I have a good connection when I’m working up there. I’d also like to set up a receiver someday by the pond to have internet down there. Once I get to that point, I’m never leaving home again.
The deed is won
It’s over, if all goes well I’ll never have to buy a house again. Yesterday wasn’t terrible, there was some last minute stress because the bank hadn’t spoken to the title company or sent over the paperwork. Literally 90 minutes before we signed the papers is when the bank finally said we were in the clear. The people that worked at the title company kept saying our bank is good for just about everything, but when it comes to mortgages they make you work for it. I believe them too because I’ve never had a complaint with my bank before all of this and it honestly felt like they were playing games with us by the way they acted. That’s all in the past now and it can’t hurt me. I own land, that’s the important part. As soon as I can I’ll start collecting rainwater and put some fruit trees in the ground. I’m also going to slow down and relax, I need to unwind. The uncertainty and inability to do anything with the paperwork got me tied up in knots that will take some time to loosen. Moving forward into moving, for the next couple days I’ll be moving thing. Instead of taking this stuff to our new place, I should drive it out to the dump, am I right? There’s only about two small bins of stuff that hasn’t been touched since our last move. I have a rule that if I put something into storage when I move into a place and it hasn’t left by the time I move again, then that stuff was trash that I should’ve thrown away, but the bins we have are old pictures and papers. Where do we go from here? Up, the sky is the limit, well the limit is about 40 feet or however tall a mature walnut tree gets.
Te amo
My dad was in the hospital recently, so I’m going to think about that idea. If you’re reading this, I love you and I hope you’re feeling better. To my knowledge, I never wished for someone else to be my father. You’ve done a great job because I’m fully capable of taking care of myself and have even been able to help other people with their messes occasionally. There was a time when I was afraid to make a noise in your presence and now I’m comfortable talking to you about anything, so thank you for that. I guess I don’t know what it means to be a dad because I’ve only ever been a son. From a son perspective I’ve never been delusional that everyone must say goodbye to their parents sooner or later, me being older than 30 is comforting because I’m not being forced to grow up by the event. I’ve often said that we only know we’re alive after we almost died, you’re still alive for a reason and I hope you enjoy it to the fullest. I’m not sure what else there is to say, just know the past was good, the present is good and the future is looking bright as well. I gotta try to make the most out of our time too, it’s easy to fall into a routine when the big things have mostly been the same my entire life. I’ll watch my share of internet trash, but I’m happy with everything I manage to squeeze out of life. There aren’t many objects that I want, I’m more about creating new memories and experiences. Everyday is a new adventure and we should never listen to anyone that tells us that helmet on our head is a wash bucket, we’ve got windmills to fight. Time marches forward.
Latch that hatch
I was going to start packing up my truck today for the move, but the weather is supposed to be rainy the next couple days. The rain will make things interesting. I’ve got a massive tarp and sheets of plastic, so hopefully nothing gets too wet during the move, but I won’t push my luck by having stuff sit in the rain. I never thought of owning a house as a moment in my life, it was always more of a financial decision. I would compare the cost of rent and not having to fix problems with the house to a mortgage with insurance. Putting money into a house counts as an asset that you’re paying interest on, the other side is not having that money in an asset means competing against inflation. None of that describes the feeling when I imagine standing on my land looking out. Now I’ll have the room to pursue all sorts of projects and I will be able to make changes to the house. I’m going to start by throwing a hammer into a wall just because I can. I’m also excited to have peg board on the walls in my little shop. On the side of the garage there are two small rooms, one is a laundry room and the other is going to be my work shop. I think the room is perfect for what I want in a shop because in a sense the room is outside of the house; I have to walk through the garage to get there. Having distance from people relieves me from the worry that someone will hear me, then I can do my Eminem raps in peace. A dedicated shop area allows me to leave a mess on the table and I don’t have to see it while walking around the house. There’s so much I want to do, but I have to wait a little longer.
Chris' Morning Pages 