She Shall Shout

Pup with mustard greens

I’m in the middle of baking cupcakes, black velvet don’tcha know. In about four minutes I’ll have to pull them out because they should already be done, but the ones in the center are still a little soupy. They’re my take on velvet lava cake. I’ve been thinking about my back yard a lot. I have to call about mulch tomorrow. I’m partly scared to because I might find out I can’t get mulch right now and it’s one less thing I’m allowed to do. When the country shuts down, it really shut down. Even if I can’t get mulch from the city, it is possible to get free mulch from a saw mill and worst case scenario I’ve seen ads online to fill your truck for $20 and that’s not the worst fate in the world. I’m planning on squaring off the garden in the backyard. Today I was envisioning a solar panel and battery box in the back corner, then I could power a water pump. I would be able to have a fountain or waterfall, even some fish in a small pond. I don’t know what I’d want to do because that is many steps away, but first step I know I want to do is a fill my yard with mulch. I also decided today it would probably be best to build an indoor growing area rather than making a green house in the backyard. Checking out the green house I’m already using, if that were to break and in some way it already did, it would be simple to replace the plastic entirely and build doors on it. For now I want to get some very basic and big stuff out of the way. Nothing has to be done, thankfully, but having a couple fun projects to juggle helps keep me distracted. I know I’m not going to be doing myself any favors by sitting around in my head for the next year.

You used to use your yelling for yoking yonder younglings

Sage flowers

This is my time, the words are given to me and I must let go of them. I just got back from the back yard with Mary and I’m about to have some pizza. This morning I planted my three sisters(corn, pole green beans, and squash) in the rest of the garden. I wanted to give them their own garden bed and I was going to do it up spectacularly. I still might, but right now my seedlings need to be placed in the ground and I don’t have the mulch required for a new bed. Hopefully on Monday I’ll call about the free mulch because the fact that I’m being held back by something so easy is sad. I guess I’ve been distracted with the purchasing land idea and fair enough because it was intended to be a distraction. Yesterday I was able to talk to some loan officers and basically learned I’ll need a 20% down payments, it’s not the worst news in the world and I was already expecting it. Now that I have confirmation, I know what I have to do; save up for a down payment. We’re not far off now and if things were perfect, we could manage it, but if you’re rushing and scrambling then that’s not perfect. I have a plan that basically requires me to do nothing, but it takes time. All this means with the combined time it will take to do the paperwork, the only land I’m growing on this Summer is the one I already have. That’s fine, it’s cheap, easy, and offers exponential growth. I’m wondering if I’ll get back into painting to help pass time, but there is still a lot I have to learn. There’s also work I could be doing around the house. I’m mostly waiting for the craziness to pass before going to a hardware store. We’ll see what next week brings.

Wet Willy wielding a wicked one

Cascading

I’ma say what I got to say. The spirit is rising, there may be obstacles to block the flow, but I’ll find a way. There’s a famous interview with Bruce Lee where he’s saying to be like water. If water is in a round cup, the water is round; it becomes the cup. After seeing the land, my wife wanted to consider buying land with a small house on it already and asked what she should look for in land. I told her I only need grass, but I was thinking that good advice I could give her is to imagine how water works on the land. I’m about to drop some knowledge for the world. Life needs water. Anytime a desire for life is considered, water should be taken into account. In the idea of a home and land, I’ll start with the broad strokes. Where is water coming from and where is it going? In my world, water either comes from the sky or the city tap. The city tap is a collection of water that once fell from the sky. The water falls from the sky and I would like to create a reliable clean way for it to get to me. Either I have to live down stream for the water for it to be carried to me or the water will be pumped. Pumping water requires energy, either physically moving a lever up and down or electric energy. When looking at land it would be nice to have high, middle and low points. Water can be collected at the top, it will be used in the middle and waste goes to the low point. Peaks, valleys, ridges, depressions, these were made by traveling water. The land is a map for us to read where water comes from and where it goes. We’ll save a lot of headaches by placing ourselves in the right spot.

Allergies allegedly grieve a great alligator

Christmas cactus flower

Yesterday I got a message from my first best friend. He fell into hard drug towards the end of high school and I hadn’t talked to him since then, but he’s good now. I don’t know what to make of it all. First thing he did was apologize for the way things went. I understand that feeling because there are a couple people in my life I’d want to apologize to and I think it’s commendable to actually do it because reaching out to someone with no clue how they’re going to react is scary. Shoot, I’ll be too scared to text people to buy stuff on Craigs List. Of course I told him he’s got nothing to worry about when it comes to me, so I hope he slept a little better last night. I want to help people, so when he comes along my thought is to help him, but he’s handling himself and doesn’t need it. I don’t want to treat him like a charity case and throw stuff at him, but I don’t want to pretend to be “cool” and he ends up thinking I don’t care. I’ll try talking to him a little bit more today. I love him like a brother, but I don’t know him as an adult. What’s standard protocol for that relationship, I guess treat him like a human. I tried to get him in contact with a mutual friend of our’s that is better with this stuff. I can act like nothing happened and be fine, but I don’t think that offers a lot of closure. What crazy times. A thing I heard recently was early 2000’s dealt with Y2K and 9/11, they had plenty to fear then and the world pulled itself together. That’s what we’re all doing, getting some rest and recovery.

Land for Lamb

Little worm friend

Good morning, the birds are singing and I’m technically awake. Today I feel like butt, we’re pretty high on the local pollen charts, so I’m sure that doesn’t help. Last night was rough, I was hungry, had a head ache, and a sleep paralysis dream. Those dreams essentially ruin an entire nights sleep, but I’m awake now. I might go to the possible farm location with my wife today. It will be good to start getting reactions for places from her. I know I’m picking this for me and it’s my toy, but we share a life together. I want her to like it as much as if I were to bring a new pet home. I may love the pet, but if it drives my wife crazy then it won’t work. I think the plot I’m looking at is in a good spot though another reason I want to take my wife there and largely why I married her is she will think of things that I won’t. When we work as a team opposed to on our own, we have new powers. This planned visit sort of came about because last night I asked her what I should do about the land idea. I don’t want to move forward on it if it makes her uncomfortable and she has many reasons to be uncomfortable right now. I’m not trying to rush things, but if the next step is for me to make a decision, I want to know. I know everything will work out, just like everything is working out now. I’m confident if my wife and I were stranded in a foreign country with nothing, we could get into a comfortable lifestyle in a couple of years. The process is finding the rules, learning the rules, and then committing to them. For people that are used to things being given to them, they never expend the energy to search out the rules in the first place.

Relieved to be revived

2nd time I’ve been blonde in my life

I’m still here. The days are moving along. I dyed my hair while I was gone. I’ve been reading about how to build a house. Got a lot of the good stuff figured out. I really need to focus on doors for a little bit, mostly I need to build a door to get an idea for framing and spacing. I’m trying to read this one book cover to cover so that I’ll have this large general knowledge. At least my book exposes me to new terms in home construction that I didn’t know. Knowing term allows me to ask questions I couldn’t before.

There was a tornado around here two nights ago, no big damage was done to us, but a lot of people are without power and some lost homes. That’s rough, I don’t know what I think about it because I think my natural reaction goes back to my take on Buddhism. My idea being if I don’t have anything, I can’t be upset by it being taken away. Isn’t it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I think I do love material goods, but only my goods, that number of things is just less for me. I know everyone wants to be lifted out of this situation and placed into another, I know that’s what me dreaming about land is, I escape to this place in my head. For now, the best thing to do is nothing. We’ll save money and energy, money is a representation of excess human energy anyway. We say, “I’ll operate that cash register if you pay me for every hour I do it.” Building up savings is a security, but even knowing it’s ok to rest and do nothing, it’s not comfortable.

Silly Hill

Orchid flowers coming soon

I’m doing much better today, though the days are still wacky as they are for everyone. I finally got my wife’s old car out of the driveway, now we can use that again. It was a frustrating ordeal probably made more frustrating by the time of the world which we did it in. I was using some cord for towing and the car got into a valley then the cord I had been using wasn’t able to pull the car up hill without snapping. I had to switch to 550 cord and I quadrupled it up to keep that from breaking. You can bet when I’m done with writing this, I’m ordering a tow strap. That whole situation would have avoided a headache if I had the proper equipment. I know this by now that having the proper tools for a situation completely change things. It goes from head aches and problem solving to problem solved, let’s relax with a drink. I thought I had learned this lesson already, but I’m going to be learning it a lot as time goes on. I remember standing in the store looking at tow straps, but was too cheap and now I’m kicking myself. Anyway, I got the car moved out and was able to jump it with my truck, then I drove it around. It would be great if that solved all the problems. I’ll try to remember to drive it a little tonight to make sure it can still start itself, then we’ll sell it as soon as we can. I was thinking about those houses you see with cars, RVs, boats, whatever big heaps of metal are sitting on their lawn and I never want to go closer to that than we did with this car. These things are way too big to be put on the “I’ll get around to it” list.

Bulldozer a Soldier

Imagine how deadly that path to the right is

I went to the suicide hotline’s chat page just now. This virus thing is suffocating and I feel like there’s nothing I can do. Not nothing I can do about sick people, but nothing I can do with my life. That is why I think this quarantine is more dangerous than people getting sick. When I start feeling like this, step one is I go for a walk. When I get to a certain threshold, walking doesn’t help. Now I’m thinking, what are my other options, I could reach out to some of the people I’m friends with, maybe go to a movie. Oh wait, I can’t go anywhere but my house and it’s frowned upon to be around people. I need to get out of the house because the house is now home to these thoughts and being here will continue to drag me down. Where do I go? Can’t even go to the park because they’ve blocked it off with signs and caution tape. The outside is cancelled. Hope you enjoyed it while it was there. I don’t want to talk to a person on the hotline because I’m just going to cry and hang up, making me feel worse. I might go to the ER to talk to someone, doing that means I hit a certain low. Knowing that I’ve hit that low hurts my overall mental, so I’ll try to fight it off. That’s why I’m writing this, hopefully getting these thoughts out will help because I’m having these arguments in my head with pro quarantine people who aren’t considering the damage they’re doing to me. Then I’m stuck in a loop that depresses and angers me. I joined the Army out of a mentality that you help the person who is more likely to survive and my whole world is acting like it’s better keep a snowflake from melting than a town from freezing to death. These are just my thoughts, no one else has to think them and I don’t care what anyone has to say about them.

Slip Slop? This is Hip Hop

Sage herb

I want to write this everyday, it’s difficult is all. I almost feel like I don’t want to reflect on my day because 1. I feel like I didn’t do anything and 2. These aren’t super happy days that we want to look at. I’m having a good time with my wife and yesterday we spent some more time together. Everything is weird right now, so there’s no comfortable way to do anything. The plants are continuing to grow, I’m continuing to figure out what it would take to run a farm and that’s basically life for me. We planted some Zinnia and Sunflower seeds in the front garden and yesterday was the first day we started to see them bud. It’ll be a lot of fun watching those seeds grow, like today they’ll probably have another growth spurt because it rained last night. While the seeds are doing lots of exciting things, hopefully the other plants in the garden will be spreading their roots. The thinking is to have a variety of plants with different timelines so everyday is something interesting. By the time the seeds reach their adulthood, the other plants will have something exciting going on. After that, it’ll be close to fall and I’ll be rushing to keep what I can alive during the Winter. Thank goodness we’re safely in Spring now, the sun is already pretty intense and I don’t see it lightening up as the year goes on. The Earth is such a strange place. I can spend all my time thinking, learn a lot and still have a lifetime of learning ahead of me. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to safely compost human waste. I think for the most part, the compost needs plenty of time to break down, but the worry is that diseases are killed by keeping the compost at a high temp for long enough. Composting done right has no problem generating heat.

Straight out the gate and turn right

Pilea growing something new

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday. I’ve been tired lately. Allergies are popping now and then there’s this crazy world. I was supposed to visit my Army friends this weekend, but I’m not going to. The way things are constantly changing, I don’t want to get stuck somewhere else and not able to come home. Today I’m trying to rest and recover. My brain doesn’t stop working because the body does. It would be nice if this brain energy would turn to reading, but when I’m not doing my cycles my body wants to shut down. Most people are in a similar shut down modes now, I think of it as new things cause us to stop and observe. I want to make changes to my life, but then when I think about what I should do, I realize things are already how I would like them. Maybe it is just about rest. I’m watching my weight more lately as is the rest of the country I’m sure. Keeping my self from gaining weight is probably number one on my mind. Not eating means I’m more likely to get some rest in because I’ll have no energy. Part of why I didn’t write yesterday and I feel like I shouldn’t be writing now is because I don’t know. What don’t I know? I don’t know, that’s a sign to me that I’m tired. Seconds before passing out, I’m looking around for something to grab on to. I’ll rest now, but I have this fear that if I rest an hour today then it’ll be two hours tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be that way and it probably won’t, I’m probably not even afraid of that and I only tell myself that to keep myself from resting. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.