Guess I’d better write something before I forget everything… So… The 16th (yesterday)…
Hard day.
Think I slept in and didn’t have a good morning routine.
I think I had a conversation with Cory for a while in the morning? Talking a lot about the stuff that’s tough for me right now. Lots of many kinds of emotions swirling.
I’m just sort of waiting for the hammer to fall, as the saying goes…
Worked down at the creek for a good little bit, but I didn’t have any grubby long pants, so it was a bit dangerous with all the poison ivy everywhere, so I tried to be careful, but it’s… everywhere.
It won’t be for long. All the work I’m doing is removing it, so… maybe we can keep it poison ivy free in the future. 🤞
Our neighbor Dan fixed the little tiller for me. I’d put a new carburetor, spark plug, air filter, and all new fuel lines on it, but couldn’t get it started. Apparently, I didn’t cut off enough of the extra fuel line it came with because it was getting kinked, and that’s why it wouldn’t start. He fixed it for free, even though that’s what he does for a living, and even dropped it off in our garage.
He’s a great guy. 😊
I tried using the tiller down by the deck to help make quicker work of all the vines, but my mom was correct: the tiller just isn’t strong enough for that. The vines get wrapped up in the blades and lock it up.
So… it was back to doing it by hand. 😕
I’ve realized that so many of the vine roots aren’t actually vine roots–they’re tree roots that run almost at the surface level. So what I was tearing out everywhere before was actually tons of little tree roots.
😬
Oops.
😅
Anyway, I got the area cleared that I wanted to get cleared. So that was good, at least. It didn’t take as long since I was leaving all the tree roots.
I spent a little while getting my arborist chainsaw working, and then I used it to cut a bunch of stuff down and cut a bunch of stuff up.
I’m not gonna get that much more done before I leave, unfortunately. Jim volunteered to help me on Tuesday. So that’ll be really good. We’ll try and get a lot done. 🤞
Anyway, I got a bit done but not a lot. Progress, at least, but it’s wet and cold, and I didn’t have good clothes to be working out there with, and I don’t have the equipment I’d like to have. Would still love to have an aerial lift or a boom truck. 🙃
Big equipment is both fun and useful. 🙃
I came home a little discouraged or… whatever… from down by the creek, dreading working on Thomas’s car on the cold and damp ground, but I’d told him it was gonna be done today. I just… hadn’t planned on the awful weather.
And that was just one of the many obstacles that dominoed, one after the other. The gaskets I’d bought to try and save Thomas money so he didn’t have to pay for the whole assembly didn’t fit–even though I bought both gaskets, not knowing which was the right one.
I stressed about that for a while before giving up and just deciding to use the whole assembly.
This repair has been one nightmare after the other.
After I finally got up my courage to go work on the truck in the dark, I went out and realized that I’d left the bolts in the trucks cowling, exposed to the weather, so the bolts had rusted, and I didn’t want to put everything back together with Rusty bolts, so I went to get my drill and wire brushes to get the rust cleaned off the threads, but I’d forgotten that the battery for my drill was dead. So then I went to Take the battery to be charged, but I forgot that I couldn’t find my battery charger. So I started looking all around for my battery charger, all over my van, all over the house, the garage, everywhere, and I couldn’t find it. By that time, running into obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, I finally just gave up. I was frustrated, discouraged, and already emotionally overwhelmed with everything else that’s going on right now that I haven’t really talked about in detail.
I feel crappy for not having Thomas’s truck done when I said I was going to have it done, but when every step you take has an obstacle, and you’re already hanging by a thread… It just wasn’t in the cards this time.
I was at super high risk for relapse, as crappily as I was feeling, but gratefully, I managed to not relapse, so that’s something.
I went to bed relatively early, right around my bedtime, I think. Heavy emotional days are also quite energy depleting days, as I imagine we are all quite familiar with.
I leave for Christmas vacation in a week, so I’m trying to get as much done as I can before I head out.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 