Now that I’m home, life is just a blur. I’m out of the habit of writing every day, and I’m so sleep deprived that I can’t really remember anything that I’ve done, and having not written in 3 days, it all blends together. I don’t remember almost anything 🙃
So the perfectionist in me is going to take a back seat for the moment as I combine three days into one entry–the 17th, the 18th, and the 19th.
It’s been hard for me to discipline myself to go to bed at a decent hours since I’ve been home, averaging probably 2:30 in the morning, but multiple times until 3:30 in the morning. There’s no reason for it other than that I just don’t want to go to bed. That makes it a heck of a lot more of a challenge to get up at a decent hour, of course, so my first day I got up at like 1:00, my second day at like 11:00, and the last few days I’ve been a lot better, but still not great. I think maybe 8:00 one day and 8:30 the next day or something like that. But I’m still going to bed super late, so I’m just exhausting myself.
Hopefully, I’ll get my self discipline back on track soon. 🙃
This is from the 18th, as I’m trying to do morning gratitude writing each day to start the day.
Morning Gratitude:
Today I’m grateful that I’m up before 9. 😊 I set my alarm for 8:00, having gotten to bed somewhere around 3:30 this morning, but apparently, I managed to turn it off without actually waking up. I woke up when Malaki called me about some work stuff. So, though I’m very tired right now, I’m grateful to be up and going. Hopefully, I can get myself back on a decent schedule relatively quickly after the crazy time zone differences and travel schedule and whatnot.
I’m also grateful, and I forgot to mention this the other day, that the electric yellow pee was because I started taking a B vitamin supplement, and apparently, excess B vitamins makes your pee electric yellow. 😁
So that’s nice. 😊
I’m grateful that I still have some of my medication left over for my stomach acid ulcer whatever stuff. I wasn’t very good at taking it properly on the trip, and my issues are getting worse again, so I’m trying to get that figured out here again. If I can get myself on a good schedule where everything is in haphazard like it was on the trip, maybe I can get myself disciplined enough to take everything exactly what I’m supposed to. 🤞 I woke up with pretty good heartburn ulcer issues with my esophagus this morning, so I really do need to get this figured out as quickly as possible blessed I end up with more expensive doctor bills.
I’m grateful that Arkansas wasn’t super super cold when I got back. Highs have been in the high 50s low 60s, I think. 😊 It is raining today, and that’s probably a good thing.
I’m grateful to have my phone which enables me to remind myself of the things that I want and need to do, such as this morning gratitude exercise to start the day. 🙂
I’m grateful that when my nephew came to me yesterday with very bad news about the tree service business, that I was able to just take it completely in stride, be completely relaxed, and be completely unconcerned. I’m not doing as well today with it, for some reason waking up all stressed out overall, but at least I was able to handle it really well yesterday. 😊
That’s probably good for now. 🙂 I’ll write more tonight, if not sooner. 🙂 Ttfn.
…
So that was the morning gratitude for that day. 😊 Otherwise, let’s see what I can remember…
When I got home from my trip, I realized that a lot of the things that I thought were going to be done while I was gone weren’t done yet, so I started working on some of those.
I got to burn permit and set the massive pile of brush on fire by the shop (maybe 40 ft by 40 ft? Maybe less) using my skid steer to periodically push the burning stuff into a tighter and tighter ball. At first, I didn’t want to put it in a tight ball because I was trying to control the size of the fire, as a brush pile that big is going to make one heck of a huge set of flames.
I also spent hours just trying to clean the trash out of the pile, as it had all sorts of stuff in it that wasn’t legal to burn.
The burning project took several hours, and I was doing it well into the night, spending probably 45 minutes or more just posing down the pile after burning most of it, so it wasn’t a fire hazard.
Since my nephew has had hand foot and mouth disease and hasn’t really been able to have much in the way of human interaction because of it, I invited him over to join me in the burning extravaganza, so he came by and we chatted for a good while, until the fire was mostly done. Once he left, I started watering it down.
The next day, I moved one brush pile from one field to another field, as the field it was in was needing to be cultivated fairly soon, so all the brush was in the way. So I got all that moved, got the gravel straightened back out (the gravel on the road got chewed up a bit pushing the brush pile with my skid steer from one field to the next).
What else… I worked on trying to figure out what was going on with the lift. It was only letting you lower the boom but not letting you raise it, indicating that it was out of battery charge. It’s got four fully-charged six-volt deep cycle batteries, and I don’t have the equipment to test those batteries properly, so I don’t know if the issue is just that it needs new batteries (good voltage but bad cranking amps) or that the motherboard isn’t working like it should and thinks the batteries are low when they actually are fine).
That’s complicating things a little bit. They are heavy as batteries, too. 60+ lbs each. I also noticed that one of the hydraulic cylinders that only had a tiny drip coming out of it when I left is now squirting, so that makes two hydraulic cylinders that are squirting fluid pretty badly. So that’s not so great. 🙃
Some of the trash that was in the pile was carpet, so I got that cut up into pieces small enough to put in the dumpster, and I grabbed the little bit of carpet that I had out on our driveway before I left and put that in the dumpster as well.
I found my missing jump box. 😊 It was attached to the battery on one of my mini excavators. Oops. 🙃
Glad I found it. 😊
Some pretty huge news… I found out last night (evening of the 19th) that my nephew who was going to run the tree business isn’t going to be able to work as a tree person anymore. His body, like mine, simply can’t handle it. We’re both too broken to do stuff like that. 😕
In some ways that’s a relief. In others, like the fact that I spent a great many thousand dollars getting it going, it’s not so great.
I also have to have a chat with my nephew about what we’re going to do for him for work and earning money, as I had promised him a salary but now he can’t work, so we’re basically starting over, trying to find something else to do. We may end up needing to just have him go find another job, I suppose. I guess we’ll see. Lots to figure out there.
I also found out that Malaki likely won’t be moving away after all, so I’ve got to figure out what exactly that means for us working together and what I can do to help him reach his goals. Hopefully, there will be something that will be mutually beneficial.
Anyway, lots going on. I’ve calmed down a little bit in some ways, and I’m just as stressed out and quick to anger in other ways. But hey, some improvement is good, right? 😊
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 