2024-07-15 — Velociraptor

Another spider in a sticky trap. Couldn’t actually tell if it was a brown recluse or not, so maybe not, as recluses are usually pretty easy to identify.

Gratefully, the crappier jump Box was able to run my little fan all night. By the time I got up, the fan was definitely slower, but it was still going.

🎉

For the last couple of years or so, I’ve had this weird issue where sometimes when I would lean over from my bed and grab my glass of water that I keep next to the bed and take a drink with my neck at a weird angle cuz I don’t want to sit up and wake myself up more, my throat would catch oddly, like something was trying to move past something else, and it was catching and then breaking Free. When that happened, it would hurt. It was pretty rare, and it only ever happened When swallowing with my neck at a weird angle.

Lately, it’s been happening more often, and my neck doesn’t have to be at a weird angle anymore.

I remember my dad had some kind of an issue with his thyroid, like a goiter, maybe?

I don’t remember. I will have to ask him. I just remember he had surgery where they slit his throat from one side to the other. 😶

Anyway, there’s definitely something wrong with my throat, and I’m wondering if that also might be contributing to the heartburn issue.

Something’s definitely not right.

Heck, maybe I can get a twofer. Maybe whatever is causing the weird swallowing thingy, if it’s related to my thyroid, maybe after fixing that, I won’t have some of the emotional challenges I’ve been facing. 😅

One can hope, right? 🙃

Tried to sleep in. Had crazy weird dreams that were super real. I had a dream about a brown recluse spider, I think. When I woke up, I wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not, but I think it was.

And I had a dream that I had a kid with a friend of mine who’s married–and she was still married. 😅 It felt like a repeat dream in the dream itself maybe? I woke up feeling like I’d had that dream before, but then I was like wait a second, maybe in my dream I felt like I’d had it before. I don’t know. Weird.

Inception?

Where’s Leonardo DiCaprio when you need him?

The day didn’t go as planned. Of course, I didn’t plan very well today. It was already hot and humid by the time I left the van this morning. It wasn’t even that late. I think it was around 8:30 or 9:00.

I did some organizing and cleaning out of the van. I finished labeling all of the bins of stuff that I have under the tarp next to the van.

I drove to my mom’s place in Pea Ridge to drop off a bin for her that I thought she might benefit from. It’s a really big one, so she wouldn’t be able to put heavy stuff in it, but it might be good for light stuff.

She wasn’t there. Apparently she had decided to walk up the road where there had been an absolutely horrific accident. Based on my mom’s description, it sounds like a truck drove off the road and smashed into a tree having dan a somersault first so that it smashed the top of the truck against the tree.

She’s assuming the person who was in the truck died pretty much instantly, but I haven’t seen anything on the news at all about a fatality. Hopefully maybe there’s a miracle, and the person is alive and will be okay. Cross your fingers. 🤞

I got back and started working on stuff down by the greenhouse. I started cleaning out ET, the van we took on the big multi-country road trip last year. There’s a possibility we’ll do a similar trip again this year. And I just got an invite from one of my sisters in Washington to again attend the fall Michaelmas celebration.

Right now I’m far too emotionally screwed up to make any plans because every little thing is a huge stress on me right now. It’s just… ridiculous. But I can’t handle pretty much anything right now. Any expectations at all on me are just too much.

I’m totally screwed up right now. 😅

As I was working on stuff, sorting and organizing and what not, I got distracted with stuff that needed to be done on the property here.

I cut up some of the large limbs from the half of the tree that had split in half and fallen over. I started burning the weeds that were left over and dried out in the spot that I had been clearing out. Unfortunately, there were some dead Vines and branches that I didn’t see, and it was windy, and they caught fire, and burst into huge balls of fire at times, scorching several trees. I didn’t mind that the saplings got scorched because they were going to get cleared out anyway, but it scorched a large chunk of a big oak tree, and way high up. 😕

It also scorched a couple of other trees That I am feeling pretty crappily about.

I didn’t realize how much the forest had encroached on the field until I saw a t-post probably 30 or 40 ft into the woods, as well as two old round bales that caught on fire And helped to scorch the trees.

That’s the perfect example of how quickly the forest spreads around here. If we didn’t mow the fields down, it would be nothing but trees within just a few years. It would start out as blackberries, and then the trees would grow up, and take over.

Anyway, so I alternated back and forth between fire stuff and organization stuff.

Did I mention that I pulled the wheel off my work van and took the tie rod off? If I didn’t, I did that too.

I also took a nice long bath in the creek. I enjoyed that 🙂.

I had gotten pretty nasty rushing around trying to make sure the fire didn’t get out of hand. I also noticed that the fish in the creek have gotten so used to me that they no longer swim away when I get in the water. In fact, they come up to me and breathe the bubbles off my leg hairs. Or maybe they’re eating my skin. But I think they’re breathing the bubbles on my leg hairs. 🙃

One interesting thing to note as I was trying to get the hay bales to burn quicker, I grabbed a hoe and spread them out. As I spread them out, in one of my raking motions, I raked a few eggs up. They were about an inch and a half to 2 in long and maybe 3/4 of an inch wide, soft and leathery

Must be vlociraptor.

I looked and looked and tried to figure out what kind of eggs they were. Google was just about useless.

Mark my words, Google is going to go the way of Yahoo. They just are not keeping up. Their search algorithm is atrocious.

Anyway, Jim suggested maybe water moccasin or copperhead, but when I looked those up, I found that neither water moccasins nor copperheads lay eggs like that. Water moccasins are live birth snakes, and copperheads do have eggs, but they lay the eggs right when they’re about to hatch, I believe, so finding eggs like that wouldn’t be them.

The only snakes that I could think of that could have such big eggs, and these eggs are big enough to eat if you wanted to, about 1/2 the size of a chicken egg, Would be a big old rat snake. And sure enough, looking up rat snake eggs, the description is exactly what these look like.

So that probably answers that.

Those are some pretty big eggs.

Big snake.

Anyway, unfortunately pretty sure I’ve killed the eggs from the heat from the fire.

One side effect from the conversation with Jim was that I had completely forgotten about water moccasins and copperheads, specifically water moccasins. I go out and take my bath, most of the time after dark, and I was worried about mountain lions.

😆

Water moccasin is probably a good bit more dangerous and more likely. Especially right where I take my bath, as there are little rocky outcroppings that snakes can and like to hide under. And water moccasins like to be out at night, I think.

Boy I’m a genius.

Am I going to stop taking baths in the creek?

No.

Am I going to be a lot more careful and a little more nervous?

Most definitely. 🙃

Melted down again today. Twice.

Why? Couldn’t find my bar of soap. Twice.

Pathetic emotional wreck. I’m just completely messed up right now. I know exactly where my bar of soap is. I keep it in the tray in my Honda Civic. Why? Because I drive my Civic over to the creek and park it right next to the little spot where you walk down to the creek. I drive over there because I don’t want to walk back through the Grass and risk getting ticks when I’ve just taken a bath.

The bar of soap wasn’t there.

I did gather all my toiletries together, and I have a very clear memory of not putting my bar of soap in with the other toiletries.

After melting down, looking all over, where did I find the bar of soap?

In with all my other toiletries.

😩

I’m going crazy.

And after taking my really nice bath, and then getting totally sweaty and dirty and nasty again trying to take care of the fire, I went to take another bath, and where was bar of soap?

I still can’t find it. I looked and looked and looked and looked. So angry. So frustrated. So discouraged.

There’s just nothing left of me. Melting down because I can’t find a bar of soap. It’s so ridiculous.

But I’m living all day everyday on the breaking edge of my emotions and mental capacity. I can handle something going sideways for a minute. But when it just keeps going sideways and sideways and sideways when there’s no reason for it Eve, even something simple like a bar of soap missing from where it’s supposed to be, I just can’t handle it. I flip out. I curse and yell and make all sorts of loud awful noises.

😞

Hoping I avoided poison ivy and poison other stuff.

I think I forgot to mention that I took the tie rod off my work van. Maybe I mentioned it. I don’t remember. I went into AutoZone to figure out what parts I had bought previously for the van. I had boxes for all the parts before, but over the years since I bought the parts, the boxes got damaged and thrown away and the parts just sat there in bags, unlabeled.

So I went to AutoZone to figure out when I bought them and what all was on the invoice that purchase. Gratefully, eventually, we were able to figure it out. Most of the parts I bought actually aren’t even correct for either of my work vans. I bought everything, I think, not knowing what my work van needed specifically, and planning to take back what I didn’t need. But here we are 2 years or so later, no more boxes, no more taking the parts back. Lots of parts that aren’t needed.

But whatever. I got it figured out, and it’s been one of those things that’s been on my to-do list for A very long time, so it’s taken care of now. 🎉

Anyway, took the tie rod off my work van. Ordered another tie rod for it. Was told it was going to come in today, but they never called me To tell me that it got delayed until tomorrow. I didn’t find out until I went to go get the part from the mailbox, and it wasn’t there, and I called, and they said that it won’t be in until tomorrow.

Really wish they would tell me those kinds of things.

Anyway, it was a really really hot day today. Gratefully, it was super windy, so that massively tempered the heat.

Going to be another hot one tomorrow. Not as hot as today, but hot, and then the rain comes, and we’re going to have about a week or so of ’80s instead of ’90s.

I’ll take it. Granted, the ’80s are probably going to be super super humid ’80s, so it’s probably going to be nasty anyway, but whatever.

It’s 11:00, and I’m going to end this post here.

Good night, folks.

~ stephen