Fairly uneventful today. I got up as normal, much like yesterday. A little more positive on the Outlook than yesterday, I think, though.
I don’t think I ate breakfast again. Haven’t been very good at eating breakfast lately. Just a hassle.
Got myself organized for the day, hopped out of the van and headed into town.
Bought some zerks for my mini excavator at AutoZone, along with a couple of tubes of high quality grease. Then it was back over to Wendy’s for more tax work.
I was able to make a pretty good dent, but my ambitious goal of being able to finish today was… Far too ambitious. I forget how absolutely monumental the job is to go through all of the different records to get all of the required data to submit.
There’s just so much to go through, even if you’re organized. So much to record. So much to keep track of. So much to total up and submit in 80 gazillion different categories. So many many different returns from different financial institutions or businesses or whatever else to keep track of.
I spent $1,800 paying accountants last year. And I still spent probably a hundred hours getting them the data.
Our tax code is ridiculous. 😅
Anyway, chatted with the Wendy’s manager today. She’s been a Wendy’s manager for ages. She knows my mom from way back when my mom and my stepdad used to go to Wendy’s everyday.
As I was nearing the end of what I expected to be my first stint at Wendy’s for the day, Jim walked in, so we ate lunch together and chatted, and then he left, and then I left as well.
The only reason I left was that It feels a little awkward being there all day. 🙃
But I easily could be. There’s so much stuff to do with this tax stuff, but I left and headed back home.
The last time my mom came out to help me with stuff down at my little Greenhouse staging area, she parked her car way off up the hill on the other side where the forest starts again in order to be able to have her car in the shade. But the field had grass/hay/weeds about a foot to 18 in tall, so… prime tick land.
So I decided to mow a little parking spot and turn around which will be good for both her when she’s visiting and helping, if I actually ever need help again down here, and it will be good because I can park my van up there in the afternoon, keeping the Sun from beating down on it, which will make it a lot easier to cool down at night.
It’s one thing To cool down a van that’s been in a particular ambient temperature. It’s another to cool down a van that’s had the Sun beating directly down on it for a large chunk of the day. When the sun’s been beating directly down on it, the inside heats up, and everything inside bakes, and then even after the sun goes down, all the stuff on the inside is still radiating out the heat that it’s stored during the day.
If I move it from one place of shade to another, then even on a nasty 98° day like today, when the heat index was 110, it’s not awful to cool down to go to bed.
So I got that mode, and now my mom can park in the shade, and so can I! I did that today, and it’s much much nicer inside the van despite it having been a brutally hot day.
Anyway, so I mowed that chunk, basically a straight shot over, and a u-turn back. The mode area is shaped like a misshapen eye bolt.
So I mowed that area, moved Rover over into the shade on the other side of the field, and then went to take a bath in the creek because I was roasting and covered with grass and weed clippings from the wind having blown what I was mowing all right back on me.
I was caked in clippings.
But as I was going down to take a bath, I realized that it would be more effective if I mowed myself a little turnaround where I parked to take my baths.
I either have to backup a steep hill which generally partially tears off my already mangled bumpers, or I drive through a section of the field where the weeds are is taller taller than I am. I’ve done that many times, so the weeds are mashed down, but… Not good.
Instead of taking a bath and then getting covered in Weeds again, I decided to just go ahead and mow that section as well to make a nice little turnaround there as well.
Of course, these are all things I should have done over a month ago, and it’s a little late now, but I’m still here, so I guess it’s not so late that it can’t be useful.
Anyway, so I grabbed the mower again, but one of the tires was flat, which was fine for the first part of the mowing that I did for the van turn around at the other side of the field, but it wasn’t going to be so great for this part that needed mowing.
But when I went to fill up the tire with my air compressor, I realized that the electrical power cord was partially severed. So I pulled the power cord apart, grabbed my soldering iron, got it heated up using my power inverter, and soldered the cable back together. Then I reassembled it, filled up the air in the mower tire (which happens to be leaking fast enough that you can hear it hiss, but it takes long enough to leak out that you can usually get your mowing done before it leaks out.)
Anyway, so I mowed that section as well, getting covered even more with weeds and what not, but it’s done now, and now I’ve got great little turnaround spots in two places that should have had them A long time ago.
I went and grabbed my Civic after parking the mower, and drove it down to the new turnaround spot where instead of parking facing straight, now I can turn into part of the loop that I mowed.
The water in the creek felt fantastic. It’s been pretty dry lately, so there’s less flow in the creek, so the leaves that sit on top aren’t flowing down the creek as quickly as they used to, and the water doesn’t look as clear as it did before, but part of that was because the beaver head chewed a whole crap ton of Vines, which was great, but then when I pulled them down from the trees, I left them sitting in the creek, and that caused the creek to reduce its flow, which I think is what caused a lot of the floating debris buildup where I usually take my bath.
It wasn’t a lot of debris buildup. I still took my bath in the same exact place. There’s just a handful of leaves, and you can see other stuff in the water that’s just sort of hanging out since there’s a lot less water movement on the top.
After my bath, I moved all the vines out of the creek, and that seemed to get the flow moving. I saw the leaves start to move down the creek instead of hanging out where they were, so that’s good. It’ll probably be a cleaner bathing area next time I’m down there. 🙃
I love bathing in the creek. 😊
I just love being out in nature and being one with nature. I just don’t like man-made stuff. I mean… of course I do. I’m grateful for all the man-made things everywhere that make life comfortable and what not, but being out in nature is my Haven. I don’t like cities and towns and neighborhoods and buildings and roads.
I want to live close to the Earth. I want my views to be of trees and rocks and hills and mountains and not houses. Not even my own house.
That’s the main reason I would love to have a hobbit house. I don’t want to see it. It’s not an ornament to decorate for me it’s something to be hidden because the land is the decoration. The beauty of nature that surrounds the home is the decoration.
Did I mention I’m thinking of moving to New Zealand for a year? Did I mention that starlink works just fine over there?
They’ve got a plan for “nomads.”
$150/mo.
I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. Just need to get all these loose ends here in Arkansas tied up so that I can really focus on what’s next.
I’ve been chatting back and forth today with the grandma of that little tiny boy that I’m so worried about. It is a bad situation, and she encouraged me, as she’s done about all that she can do.
So I planned to go back over to Wendy’s to see if I could catch the young man and his family there again And to continue working on my taxes, But after I chatted with my mom, I decided to head over to her place instead And hang out with her while doing my taxes, planning to go to Wendy’s a little bit later in the evening.
So I went over to her house, did some laundry, which was nice to get done, did some tax work, are some borscht, And then we both headed over to Wendy’s in the hopes of catching the young man in his family there.
They weren’t there, but the manager on duty let me know when he was working next, so I’ve got that noted down, and I’ll be heading over there at that time.
I ordered frosties for us, trying the new triple Berry that they have, and they accidentally made a junior chocolate one instead of a triple Berry for my mom, so she got both a chocolate and a triple Berry. 🙂
From Wendy’s, I bid my mom good night And headed home, moving Rover from his perch up on the hillside on the far side of the pasture back to his normal spot.
I spent a good while texting back and forth with both of my brothers today, one earlier today while I was at my mom’s place, and then the other while I was back in Rover for the night.
Nice to have family.
Well, it’s after midnight. I’ve got a little more winding down stuff that I want to do before closing my eyes, so I’m going to shut this post down here and upload it.
Love and hugs.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 