2020-11-09 — Glowing Eyes

It’s 4:55.

My alarm whistles. My eyes open; and my arm reaches to swipe the little icon to the right.

Deja Vu. It took only a split second, but as I reached for my phone, I realized that I had just barely dreamed that I had done the same, and now here I was doing it real life.

I twisted the nob of the reading/desk lamp that I have at the head of my bed (or foot, depending on which way one wants to sleep, as there’s no headboard or even frame).

My eyes were tired. I thought briefly how I didn’t want to get up, but I was determined to regain my discipline and stay on track with the routine that I have that’s so helpful for me.

Being so early in the morning, I wanted to wake my brain up, so I dropped to the floor and cranked out 10 pushups in the hopes of getting the blood to flow to my brain so that I could have a more successful morning memorization session.

I thought about servicise, wondering what to do. I thought about running, but there are people who’ve been permitted to hunt on the land here for deer season (we live next to something like a 6,000 acre military park that’s loaded with probably more deer than is healthy for the area, and they spill over into our woods). With hunters around, I didn’t feel like going for a run in the dark and becoming the accidental evening meal.

And, not sure exactly what I’m doing with the trench to the garden right now, having not done a real servicise in quite a while with my schedule all whacked like it’s been and not having pondered what to do with the trench at the moment, I decided to grab the metal rake, and go to town on the pathways through the woods.

I quietly exited the house, grabbed my headlamp from the Durango, and headed into the woods, raking up leaves and rocks to one side, so as to create a smooth path to walk on.

Actually, I’d like to keep the leaves on the path, but that would be quite the feat–finding the rocks and sticks to remove them without removing the large leaves that cover them.

Speaking of large leaves, sycamore leaves. Wow. I don’t have small hands, and one sycamore leaf is about the size of four or five of my hands.

Those leaves are massive. Makes me feel like I’m in a Jurassic Park forest.

So cool.

Squirrel!

Anyway, I don’t have much more time to write, so I guess I’ll dispense with the more artistic style and give you the quick and dirty the rest of the way.

But first the glowing eyes. Walking through the woods with my headlamp on, here and there and all over, I see rather brilliant little glowing spots, reflecting light back at me in a sort of rainbow of colors, I think. I think I’d thought of them as being just the reflections of the drops of dew on the grass and leaves, but I’d also wondered… and today, I learned. I saw the brilliant reflection near me, wandered over to it, and what was it that was reflecting?

Eyes.

Eight of them.

In fact, each little beautiful colored and twinkling reflection was a collection of eight eyes–on a single creature.

That’s right. You guessed it. Spiders! Just harmless little wolf spiders, but it was so cool. All these glowing eyes. Cat’s eyes glow like that, and I think maybe bears’ eyes do, too? (I remember being on a hike in the mountains of Utah with a few people, and there were glowing eyes looking back at us through some bushes, and the eyes were wide. Big creature, whatever it was.)

Anyway, spiders, memorizing, walking (6 10k+ days in a row of walking now), family study with mom, breakfast, 5x5s, getting David taken care of, working on the home front, mowing the lawn (to chew up the leaves. So much easier to mow than to rake them all). Spent an hour working on my book, per my commitment to myself and Cory. And now it’s 8:56 p.m., and I’m off to bed.

I chose not to work on cars today. I appreciated the comments y’all gave yesterday to my post. I’ve been thinking about both, and I’ve been pondering. I’m going to leave being a mechanic. That’s the certain thing and no surprise. The questions are when and how.

I have one life.

Change is on the horizon.

So… there you go. Inching closer and closer.

#1. I’m grateful to have been able to take the day off of working on cars themselves today.

#2. I’m grateful to have gotten the deck over the creek back in reasonably usable shape. I took all the rotten wood up to the burn pile, the trash to the trash, the rocks out of the way, and I mowed down all the tall weeds that impede you from easily getting on the deck (You had to walk through super tall weeds to get there. No longer). Once hunting season is over, and it’s not dangerous to go walking around in the mornings and whatnot, I’ll spend a good amount of time down there, I think.

Thinking about micro hydro down there, too, but not my land, and micro hydro is a pretty big project. Not massive, but decently large.

#3. I’m grateful to be making progress on the walking paths.

#4. I’m grateful to be able to walk around and around the property. It’s so beautiful.

#5. I’m grateful for another good day of memorizing/reviewing.

#6. I’m grateful to be able to go to sleep now.

Loves and hugs to all you wonderful lovelies out there. May we be better tomorrow than we were today. May we brighten another’s tomorrow.

Bring it on.

Lift the World.

~ stephen