2020-04-25 — A Pleasant Surprise

Buenas noches, mi gente fabulosa!

Happy Saturday night!

It’s been a really good day today. My migraine lifted about 5 ish this morning after getting a couple of calls that woke me up after going to bed. It was super hard to get back to bed after the first call, my head was pounding. The second call was super early in the morning, and I just ignored it. But by 5 ish, I think I could tell that it was starting to lift a bit. By perhaps 7:30ish, I was somewhat functional, and by maybe 9:30 I felt just about back to normal.

That was wonderful! 😌

It’s amazing how I can be feeling so awful, and then just a few hours later, I’m totally fine. Nausea gone. Pain gone. Weakness gone. Exhaustion gone.

Anyway, I took advantage of an absolutely gorgeous day (sunny and in the 60s maybe?) to get some yard work done. A couple months ago or so, I’d carved out a swale for the water from the upper part of the driveway to run down, so it didn’t wash out my first speed bump and destroy the lower driveway.

For those of you who don’t know (and one of these days I’ll make a video to post for y’all to see) our driveway is about, what… maybe 500 or more feet long?

It’s long. Whatever it is.

The first bit is fairly steep dirt road, and then the upper driveway turns into a very gentle slope in sort of a j shape that extends from the end of the lower driveway up to the garage door. The slope makes the driveway wash out pretty good in the amazing Arkansas storms.

To combat the washing out of the driveway when it turns into a river from all the rain water, I’ve added several speed bumps (5 so far, and I’m in the process of making a sixth [little by little]. If I can ever get my butt going to do morning exercise, I’m gonna make my exercise be digging up dirt to make a speed bump with).

Anyway, so I carved out that swale at the top, on the uphill side of the upper speed bump, but so much rain came before grass was able to fill it in that it eroded away the dirt, so when I say I picked up rocks, I went through and raked up the rocks that were sitting on top or had washed down, and I dumped them in a pile where the sixth speed bump is going to be.

I also grabbed the rocks and pea gravel off the hill that’s right by the garage itself. There’d gotten to be so many rocks and pieces of pea gravel there that it choked out the vegetation. Hopefully it’ll now start filling in.

So… I did thaaaaat… I also got the lawn mowed, rockin’ out to some peaceful instrumental piano music on Amazon Music.

So nice. 😊

I’ve been craving just the peaceful music lately. I’m getting tired of the stuff I’ve been listening to. Years ago I quit listening to most music and just listened to church music pretty much exclusively. That was the best time of my life, I think. I was most sensitive then.

The other music, not that it’s bad, but it dulls me a little bit. I prefer to be more sensitive.

Not sure I’m gonna go back to the church music route. I’d have to come to terms with the whole church thing first, which I might. We’ll see.

Either way, the instrumental, classical style music just soothes my soul. Fills me up. The other stuff, the country, the rock, the alternative, etc., that’s fun, and it’s moving sometimes. There are some fun songs, some inspiring songs, some educational songs, etc., but it’s just… not as good in my mind. It’s just missing a key ingredient. Its not soul fulfilling to me.

Moving on…, So I debated not working at all today and just having my tech go out and do all the jobs. I was recovering from my joyful migraine experience, after all. In fact, that was sort of the plan until I had someone need a battery replaced, and I was like, well… that’s super easy and quick money, so I guess I’ll do that. Then I realized there was another job that was scheduled that I personally needed to do because I had the super spiffy expensive scanner, and my tech doesn’t have one that nice.

Then another job popped up that was super easy (one of the Autozone employees had a cousin come in who needed an alternator, and I was right there, so I threw it in really quickly for him. Then another job popped up… and well… Yeah.

On the bright side, I took the whole first half or more of the day off, and by the time I’d finished working today, I wasn’t too far off from my record for the most money I’ve made in a day as a mechanic! If I’d worked the morning as well, I believe I would have broken my record. 😎

Such a pleasant surprise.

Not only was it a great money day, it was a low-key money day! It wasn’t super stressful. It was barely a deal at all. Just some fairly basic jobs, and boom. Done.

Again… sooooo nice!

Gratitude!!!

#1. I’m grateful to have had another sister of mine who happened to be on Facebook join in the effort of creating the values list we’re working on. More progress going forward.

#2. I’m grateful that I got to enjoy a really beautiful spring day here. I really do like mowing the lawn, especially with some beautiful piano music lightening my soul. Riding around and around and around.

#3. I’m grateful that it turned out to be a wonderful day of work that added more dinero to the coffers that will hopefully allow me to get going faster on this nonprofit stuff. I’m thinking I might need to write a book about this more-similar-than-different stuff. Otherwise, it’s like “who’s this guy, and why should I care?” If I write a book, then if I’m being introduced, they can say “author of,” and I’d guess that a majority of people, though not all for sure, would ascribe a certain level of respect, or at least a greater willingness to listen and take seriously (not that writing a book means anything at all, just people tend to be a little more willing to lend credibility to a person if they’ve written a book, so I’m thinking I might work on writing one related to all this, so that when it all gets going, I have that and not just my college degrees and basic life experience.

#4. I’m grateful that I can be outside mowing the lawn and not get super allergic. I had some sniffles here and there, but for spring time with so many things blooming, it’s really nice to not have that as one of the things I have to deal with in life. I’ve had awful allergies before, so I appreciate it more when I don’t!

#5. I’m grateful that I have a day off tomorrow. Gonna be nice to relax a bit–take a load off.

Well, folks. Thanks, for reading my online journal. I hope you find motivation, encouragement, and other beneficial things while reading it.

Oh, and tack on another day to each of my thingies. I’m not sure where I’m at right now, so I’ll take a gander back at yesterday’s entry to see for sure.

One moment…

Okay, 19, 27, 18.

Might be time to start adding another one, like daily exercise. 🙃

I think I’ll put that one on there to start on Monday. 😁

Good night, peeps.

Lift the world.

~ stephen