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.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Mary is in the other room preparing dinner. We’re having chicken, I’m very excited for it because it’s a whole chicken. When You have a whole chicken, the meat is so much juicier. I’ve been thinking a lot about growing and eating my own animals. I think I’m warming up to the idea and if I had to keep animals around for like three months, I’ll probably be happy to take a break from caring for them. I’d have to start small, probably only one.

I’ve now eaten dinner, it was delicious and we even sat on the front porch for a little bit afterwards. What I’m really enjoying about the quarantine is getting to enjoy our house. We put time into making it look nice, but I think everyone gets caught up in a cycle where things must continue to improve and the American way is that the amount of improvement must improve. That’s why we have to have recessions. We’re creating something out of nothing and eventually the system has to catch up and cool down. The big question everyone always wonders when it stops is will it start up again. “The party is over” is a phrase I heard a lot when this all started. The idea people are afraid of is if we as a society have peaked and things will never be as good as they were again. This is a common fear of the world because people fear it in their individual lives. I don’t believe it happens though. The person who “peaked” at a young age still has a great life. When a person isn’t in the top percentage of competitors, that doesn’t mean they aren’t living. There may be new conditions for our life going forward, but we were born into certain conditions we didn’t get to choose already.

Updating

I wrote a letter to my friend Qewbert today, I remarked on the date then and I’m remarking on it now. It’s a nice date, everyday can be a fun day when you enjoy numbers. Mary asked me to paint with her tomorrow. This can be terrifying. I actually thought that I should teach her to paint because I think the part of painting that I struggle at, she would already be better than me at. That’s why I should have a sledge hammer. I was day dreaming earlier about how I would teach a cow to pull a plow. I don’t think it would be too hard, but I think renting a tiller would be smart. Then I figured I’m just going to buy a tiller, I know I’m going to keep coming back to it. It’s like with buying bags of dirt, there’s no such thing as too much. I have to get mulch soon, but I really need to move the spare car we have in our driveway. That car is a such a weird character in our lives. Definitely our red headed step child. If we could just right click that car and delete it, we would be happy. That’s honestly how I felt clearing out the front gardens, like I was dragging a box. I have a similar feeling when it comes to imagining buildings. I’m happy to be alive and the future is looking like a lot of fun. Maybe the world will have some sort of Spring Break that lasts months. What is the world going through? There’s no telling what the effects will be and how long they last. The thing with convincing people to be afraid of everything is then it’s hard to calm them down. Maybe you never want them to calm down, but that’s not stable. Everyone is after their stability.

Americans are Tea Tossing Tiger Trainers

Now I make pretty things. Swiss cheese monstera

I can’t stay long today, I’ve got to start this movie. I’m going to watch SLC Punk, I was thinking it is one of the most influential movies of my life. It’s like my guilty pleasure, because at my core I’m a punk. There was one time a bouncer tried to throw me out for what I felt was the wrong reasons. In his defense I had just dropped my beer and it made a mess with broken glass. The wrongful accusation I say was he told me he warned me. He did no such thing, I suppose it’s possible that he warned me and I was too drunk to remember. Anyway, I got kicked out of the bar and I’m like, “I’m not going anywhere, you did not warn me!” The manager or w/e comes out to try and get rid of me, somewhere in the arguments someone says the word “punk”. It clicks with me, I was being a punk for the fun of it. I apologized to everyone and headed home as quick as I could. I like arguing, and I like picking fights. I’ve often said the only time you’re reminded that you’re alive is when you almost die. In some sense I live near that line so I live as much as possible. When I was drinking heavy, I was a mess. I was the cannon ball and the booze were the gun powder. All these stories are running through my head but each requires so much detail to tell correctly. I don’t want to look bad, so I’ll just type the sentences as they come into my brain. Breaking into the basement of a bar, having a bouncer chase me down and I found a second door that led back to the bar so not only did I escape but stayed in the bar. Waking up on a hospital gurney in a hospital because cops made my friends call an ambulance saying I was too drunk. I had to work at 6 am the next morning, so I woke up in the hospital and started pulling stuff out and working my way towards the door. First time I slept on a bathroom floor was during a college pride (drinking) day. I’m actually surprised I never got stitches from any of that stuff, but not like I would have gotten them done if I needed them.