G’day, all. 😊
I can feel depressive frequencies trying to drag me down out of nowhere this morning, so… I guess morning gratitude is perfect. 😁
- I’m grateful to have functional electricity, reminded of that blessing after our recent longer-than-usual outage (10 hours). Don’t think I wrote about that?
- I’m grateful that my vehicles are at least running and getting me where I need to go.
- I’m grateful for cell phones and cell networks that allow pretty much immediate communication to family and friends all over the entire world.
- I’m grateful to have a bed to sleep in with enough warm blankets to keep me toasty warm.
- I’m grateful to have really good people in my life–good family, good friends, good… everyone. 😊
- I’m grateful that I live in a country where, with hard work and dedication, it’s possible to improve my situation.
- I’m grateful I was born into circumstances that made learning to read and write so much easier.
That’s it for the morning!
…
Okie dokie. I’m writing this journal entry a little earlier than I have, which is great for my efforts to get on the schedule I want to be on.
Currently, I’m sitting at the bottom of the pond next to my Hill sister’s house, having spent probably about 12 hours with ax in hand, cutting down dozens and dozens of trees in an effort to clear out all the nastiness of overgrown vines and way too many trees.
My sister has a gazillion things going on, and life is pretty challenging right now, so I’m trying to help out by getting her a bright spot to be able to see every single day when she leaves her house and comes back.
It’s nice to be able to have something done that has been on your list of things to do for years. And though there are lots of things that I’m not able to do to help, this is something that I can do. During my chat with her yesterday, I asked her if there was something that she thinks about every single time she drives up our driveway to the house that she’d love to have done, and this was one of those things.
So shortly after getting up this morning, I headed over to the pond (it’s a dry pond, because when the guy who dug it did it, he accidentally went further down than he should have, past the red clay, so it won’t hold water. We need to have a layer of red clay added, so it will hold water.). I’ve been here hacking down and hacking up all these trees, and ripping out gazillions of vines.
There’s poison ivy all over, so it’s likely that I could end up with a massive case of poison ivy, especially since I’ve been burning the branches. I’ve tried not to get poison ivy in the fire, but I can’t be sure that I haven’t, and I certainly can’t be sure that I’ve not been touching poison ivy multiple times this entire effort.
If I’ve been breathing in poison ivy smoke, heaven help me. 😬 That could be enough to send me to the hospital.
I’ve been getting faces full and lungs full of smoke, so it’s going to be interesting to see how everything turns out. 🙃
I also took the corner of my ax to my left knee. It hurt super badly, especially since it was really cold outside, but I didn’t realize that I’d actually broken skin (because I’m wearing sweatpants) until I felt cold wetness on my left knee, saw a wet patch, pulled up my pant leg, and stared wide-eyed at a patch of blood smeared all over my leg about the size of my hand. 😶
Oops. 🙃
Let’s see… I had dinner at Jim and Steph’s tonight. It was nice to be there. 😊
After dinner, I headed out for another 4 hours or 5 maybe of cutting down trees, pulling out vines, and burning everything.
My lungs hurt a little bit, either from inhaling just too much smoke anyway, or because the smoke is poison ivy smoke. Didn’t think I inhaled very much smoke. I’m hoping it’s just the smoke and not anything worse.
I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to get done. It looks a lot different, at least on the inside. From the outside, up by the house, I’m guessing it probably doesn’t look much different at all. 🙃
But I’ve made a heck of a lot of progress, especially with me just using my ax and not my chainsaws. (Stevie had the chainsaws for the job today).
My knees and hips are really angry with me. It’s so hard to just sit around and not do this kind of work. My heart and soul love doing this kind of outdoors hard labor.
Yup, I absolutely love it. 😊
My body just… doesn’t. 🙃 Not because the work itself is that challenging, but because I’ve hurt myself so many times, that my body can’t handle it.
Had I not gone on that one brutal hike in new zealand, I probably could have done all this work without anything more than the normal pain that I deal with, but whatever. Here we are. Can’t go back and change what’s already done.
Avery
Anyway, need to go home and get myself hydrated, as the only thing I’ve had to drink all day is two orange sodas, a throwback to my elementary school years. 😁
Well folks, I’m going to head on out of here. I haven’t put the fire out, but since it’s been burning all day without any issues whatsoever, and since it’s not much more than a big pile of coals right now, and since it’s supposed to start snowing tonight, I think we’re pretty safe. Cross your fingers at least..😁
Beautiful day. Grateful to be able to serve my sister. Hope I can make a difference.
Lift the World
Love and hugs. 😊
~ stephen
Lift the World 