(written on the 3rd and 4th)
It was a hot hot hot night last night. I think that might have been the hottest night’s sleep that I’ve had.
It was straight up nutty.
But I guess that’s what you get when you’ve got mid-90s during the day, and the van trapping all that heat inside for so long. It’s going to take a long time for that heat to radiate back out.
Pretty brutal.
I was slow going this morning because of the heat. I wanted to sleep longer, but I couldn’t. When I emerged from the van, it was a lot nicer outside than it was inside. .😅
I started doing some clean up, organizing stuff around the greenhouse area. I went looking for stuff in my bins because I wanted to be a little bit better organized.
I shaved for the first time in a while. Well, “shave” is relative. I guess it would probably be more accurate to say I trimmed my beard. I put my hair cutting clippers on the 1 and 1/2 setting and trimmed it all up.
What else… I took some stuff over to the dumpster and found that it was a mess at the dumpster again, trash falling out all over the ground. It’s a little demoralizing because it happens so often. But I had a little chat with one of the boys and let him know that when we bring trash up, we’ve got to close the lids. Everything needs to be inside, and the lids need to be all the way closed.
Hopefully, we can go forward with that. 🤞
I went down to the deck area, as family reunion stuff starts tomorrow, I think. Yeah, tomorrow is the 4th of July. Crazy. Time is just going so quickly.
I’m not going to complain.
Anyway, I spent a good little while down at the deck weeding. Really hoping I don’t get poison ivy. There’s a vine that grows around here that supposedly is not poison ivy, but I could swear that it gives me the same poison ivy rashes.
Very leery of the stuff.
Every 10 or 15 minutes, or so, I took a break to go rinse off in the creek.
Crossing my fingers. Very very tired of poison ivy. 😅
I’m in charge of making sure there are lights down at the Creek area, and Jim thought he had some, but he couldn’t find them, so he measured out how much he thought we might need, and I went to Lowe’s to buy them. That’s actually where I’m coming back from right now as I dictate this on my phone. 🙃
I’ll be back later with updates.
…
Ok, stopped off at AutoZone on my way home, saw I could take back parts I tried to take back the other day. Chatted with the manager for a little while about what’s going on with his life. I haven’t been in there much at all since I stopped fixing cars. 🙃 I also checked the bulbs that I needed to replace the burned out bulbs in the back so I don’t get another Fix-It warning from the cops.
Started the process of stringing the lights for the family reunion, but I didn’t have a Way I was happy with to secure them to the trees without causing harm to the trees. It was suggested that I just put in some heavy duty fence Staples into the trees, and that would probably work, but I just hate harming the trees.
Probably doesn’t really even matter. 🙃
Maybe just an example of one of the billion ways that I over complicate my life all the time trying to always do everything the best way possible.
I spent some time up at Jim and Steph’s hanging out after I got all the lights, as I was trying to confirm exactly which trees Jim wanted the lights to be strong from.
I ate some watermelon and cornbread as we all hung out and chatted.
It really is cool to have family so close, just a house over kind of thing all in the same beautiful property.
After hanging out with them, I grabbed the mower and went over and mowed down perimeter around all of the greenhouse stuff in the upper field, the stuff that I brought back months ago from Oklahoma. It’s all just been sitting there, and that’s… not good. 😕
So I mowed a perimeter around everything, some of it being hard to find with how much has grown over already.
That way Jim can hay the field and not worry about running into anything.
I also mowed paths around the various different piles so it will be easier to pick stuff up without getting completely tick infested.
I rounded out the day by moving some of my equipment and vehicles to a less conspicuous part of the lower field, in the hopes that it will be less visible to people who are all here for the family reunion. Don’t want it looking like a junk pile down there. 😕
Anyway, that was the day.
I need to focus on gratitude. Everything else is swallowing me up.
So…
- I’m grateful I remembered that the deck area needs to be weeded. Lots of weeds growing. We’re entering the slower time of year with there being a lot less rain and a lot more heat, but still…
- I’m grateful that the lights that we bought were 50% off. Normally, they are $50 a string, but just $25 until the 10th. 🥳 Jim and I split the cost, buying four strings.
- I’m grateful to be making at least some progress down in my staging area. It’s looking a little better everyday, so that’s good.
- I’m grateful for Amazon delivery. Heck, I’m grateful for all the deliveries. Amazon, Walmart grocery, everything.
- I’m grateful that the AC works in at least one of my gazillions of vehicles. Thank you, little Civic. 🎉
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 